The Wasting Game
by Polomonkey
Summary: Merlin stops eating. No-one notices, and then someone does.
1. The Eating Thing

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: discussion of eating disorders, angst.

A/N: Hope you like it! Please be aware of triggers for eating disorders.

~III~

**"The eating thing:**

**the slouching beast****  
****that's come to stay,**

**to splatter the slops****  
****and foul the manger,**

**to snap at the hand****  
****that tries to feed it, so**

**we leave it and we lie****  
****in darkness, trying not to know,**

**not to hear it gnawing****  
****in the next room, gnawing**

**itself to the bone."**

It isn't hard anymore, not really. It comes naturally now, looking without touching, seeing plump Chelsea buns laid out in baker's windows or freshly picked strawberries sitting cosily in punnets on street stalls: seeing them and walking away. He no longer covets the chocolate bars his friends munch in free periods, the bags of crisps they tip down their throats - even the apples they crunch seem bloated and disgusting somehow. He has learned to hate the heady smell emanating from fast food restaurants, even trained himself to gag at the spicy scent of Mrs Patel's cooking from the flat next door.

_(she used to press homemade sweets into his hands when he was younger, chikkis and khajas, but now when they meet in the corridor he says no politely and smiles and tries not to see the look of worry in her eyes.) _

The excuses come easy too, after a little while. "I just ate" or "I'm still full from breakfast" or "The canteen food makes me queasy". He steers clear of the post-school outings to Pizza Hut, the late night drunken takeaways, the hung-over greasy spoon breakfasts. He drinks water by the litre, swilling it in his mouth, savouring the tastelessness as it slips easily down his throat.

No-one notices. It is spring, the final year of sixth form and his friends are wrapped up in the ecstasy of being eighteen, on the cusp of university, of adulthood, of life. They're giddy with it, heads full of schemes and dreams and fears and love, like children half-lifted off their feet by kites, too light-headed to realise that one of their number is earthbound.

So no-one notices.

Until someone does.

~III~

Merlin really didn't think it would be Arthur.

He wasn't overly concerned about any of them, convinced he was covering his tracks rather well; but if he'd pegged anyone to be suspicious, it would have been Gwen. Gwen who only last week frowned when he refused yet another dinner invitation and said softly: "You never come over anymore. My mum misses you. I miss you."

Or maybe even Lance, who latched onto his wrist to emphasise some point he was making about the book they were reading for English Lit, and suddenly looked surprised, his fingers looping round Merlin's arm.

"Are you getting skinnier, mate? I'm pretty sure my fingers aren't supposed to meet."

And Merlin had snatched his wrist back, shaking down the long sleeved shirt he always wore nowadays till it covered his hand, and only then did he force a smile on his face and object to being teased just because he wasn't some football team super-jock like the rest of them.

But Arthur? Arthur was… oblivious. In every sense of the word. From the little things, like never noticing when one of the girls got their hair cut, or when Gwaine got that extremely ill advised eyebrow piercing; to the big things, like not realising Freya was upset despite her silently crying next to him all the way through Maths, or the fact that Merlin was desperately, hopelessly, irrevocably…

Well. What good was being in love with Arthur Pendragon anyway? Merlin had allowed himself to entertain some small flicker of hope when Arthur and Gwen had finally called it off at the end of last term, but that flicker was doused pretty quickly when Arthur showed up to the pub after Christmas with Mithian from the year below on his arm. That night had been so strange, Merlin felt almost out of his own body as his friends laughed and joked around him; all he could look at was Arthur, his face, his eyes, the arm he had casually slung around Mithian's waist.

_(and she was so thin.)_

Such a tiny, petite little girl, t-shirt pulled tight against her flat abs, long fingers fiddling with Arthur's hair, tipping back her head to laugh with perfect white teeth.

Merlin was as tall as Arthur, probably taller. Is that why they didn't fit together, is that why Arthur didn't want to take him in his arms? Because he was the wrong shape, because he couldn't fold into Arthur perfectly like Mithian seemed to?

~III~

It wasn't that that set him off, not exactly. Merlin doesn't remember this very well, but his mum tells him he was strange about food when he was little. _Picky,_ she calls it.

_("it wasn't that you wouldn't eat love, it's just you only wanted certain things. At certain times too. You went through a phase where you only wanted rice, then you swapped that for noodles. Then you started making me count aloud every mouthful you took.")_

His mum had put a stop to it after that, refused to make any special meals or play any games.

_("you were furious at first, threw some right tantrums. But then you just seemed to forget all about it. It's just one of those phases kids go through.")_

So the eating thing, as Merlin euphemistically called it, wasn't exactly new. During the stress of his GCSES he got into a pattern of not eating much as well, driven mad by fear of failure and unable to leave his books even for a second. But then the exams weren't so bad and Arthur insisted on dragging him on holiday to that cottage in Wales when they were over, the one that Uther bought for Igraine just before Arthur was born and then never set foot in it again for the next eighteen years. Merlin had thought it might be sinister or just plain sad but the cottage was in surprisingly good nick, kept clean by a woman from the village, and if Arthur looked a little pensive when they first walked in, he soon cheered up.

As a ploy to get Merlin out of his own head, it had worked remarkably well. They went swimming every morning in the sea, and Merlin read on the beach while Arthur practised his footwork with a beach ball, and in the evenings they drank cheap beer purchased with Arthur's cousin's ID. And Arthur had shown himself to be surprisingly handy with a saucepan, his food wasn't gourmet, but it was pretty good and somehow, with Arthur bragging opposite him about his amazing chef skills, Merin hadn't found it difficult to eat.

He sometimes thinks of that holiday as the last of the good times. Because when they came back to school for Year 12, Arthur was suddenly staring at Gwen a lot more and Merlin realised to his horror that Gwen was staring back. And, sure enough, two months into the new term, at Gwaine's 'Who Needs An Excuse to Have a Party' party, Merlin had drunkenly stumbled into what he thought was an empty bedroom to see Gwen and Arthur intertwined on the bed, lips locked together.

"Merlin!" Arthur said, but the worst thing was, he didn't sound annoyed, just elated, like someone who had finally got what they wanted. And Gwen just giggled and the sound was so intimate that it cut Merlin like a knife, leaving him to choke out an apology and quietly shut the door behind him.

He had kept it together mostly, the next couple of months. Gwaine and Lance were convinced it was just a brief fling (and if Lance may have been a little too insistent on that point for reasons of his own, no-one was cruel enough to pick up on it) and even Freya laughed when Merlin would-be casually asked if she thought they were in love.  
"Jesus, Merlin, they're seventeen! Bit soon for that," and the weight in Merlin's chest lessened slightly, until Freya added; "It's probably just wild sex at this stage," and Merlin felt bile rise in his throat, sharp and acrid.

_(he still feels that bile when he looks at Arthur some days, but he can't tell if it's just a side effect of the constant sour hunger pangs in his stomach.)_

But soon a couple of months was six months, then eight months, then a year, and it clearly wasn't a fling anymore. Arthur and Gwen were no longer two, they were one, a package deal. They ate together, walked to class together, went home together. And when Merlin called Arthur at the weekends, to see if he wanted to go to the park or the cinema, Arthur had invariably made plans with Gwen. So Merlin waited patiently and went to the park by himself but Arthur was still never free so Merlin stopped going out and stopped calling and started spending his weekends in his bedroom with the curtains drawn and the television on.

He was eating, still. But the childhood games were back. He'd have days where he'd favour one colour of food, or days where he could only take bites in multiples of three, or days where he'd throw his plate away if any of the foods on it touched each other.

It didn't feel like a problem. More like a source of amusement, something to pass the time.

But somewhere along the way he stopped snacking, because he didn't feel like it; then stopped breakfast, because he never had time for it in the morning; then found himself skipping lunch before it was too hard to concentrate on class when he was too full, it made him sleepy.

He still ate dinner though, every night, with his mum, so he knew it was all okay.

But then the month before Christmas, his mum got switched onto the night shift at the hospital. So she wasn't there in the evenings any more, and even though she left him ingredients, secure in the knowledge she'd been teaching him to cook for years, Merlin found he couldn't be bothered. It seemed like such a hassle when he got home from school, and he was also so tired nowadays, so much so that he needed to go to bed the instant he got in.

And then it was the new term and Arthur was with Mithian and she was so impossibly small.

~III~

It's March now, and Merlin can't remember the last time he'd eaten a proper meal. He keeps himself going, sometimes grabbing a slice of dry toast in the morning, or a yoghurt from the canteen at lunch.

He knows it's not enough. He knows that the constant pounding in his head, the shortness of breath, the dizziness are warning signs of worse to come. He can see how his clothes hang off him, how his cheeks have hollowed out, how the skin stretches tight across his collarbone. It doesn't make him feel good to look in the mirror, but it doesn't make him feel bad either, not anymore. There is less of him there and that makes him feel contented somehow. He's forgotten what he really wanted out of this when it all began but his mind seems to be guiding him to some sort of… nothingness. It's like… he doesn't want to be. Not in a dramatic, suicidal sense, simply that he has this vague, unarticulated thought that he's trying to move towards a kind of disappearance.

It doesn't really make sense but Merlin thinks that's okay, because what does make sense anyway? They're reading war poetry in English Lit and Merlin finds it hard to concentrate these days, he's barely scraping by in most of his subjects.

_(there's a half completed essay under his bed due for next week and he has no idea how to complete it, so that's what he does, hides all his unfinished work under the bed along with the ingredients his mother leaves for his dinner, wraps them tightly in plastic bags and imagines them rotting below him when he lies in bed at night.)_

But he likes the poem where everyone suddenly bursts out singing because it makes him think that nothing really fits together, that they're all just muddling through life waiting for the random and the funny and the tragic. And there's no control, he knows that, but why not this one thing? Why can't he be in charge of this one thing? Why can't he eat what he wants?

~III~

It's Tuesday and he is floating, drifting down the corridor like he's airborne. The strip-lights above his head are passing in and out of his vision as he glides along and he's happy and he's free and then… and then suddenly the light is too bright and he's not drifting, he's being dragged down, inexorably, pulled towards the earth by some twisted force of gravity and there are spots dancing in front of his eyes…

"Merlin?" A familiar voice says. A blurred face appears before him, and he can barely make out the features but he'd know that voice anywhere.

"Arthur?" he says.

Then he falls.


	2. Been So Long

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: discussion of eating disorders, language.

A/N: Just realised I forgot to explain the words in bold! They're taken from an amazing poem by Philip Gross called The Wasting Game.

~III~

"**It's the Dark Ages now. I believe**  
**in possession, in demons that speak****  
****in crone voices out of eighteen-year-old lips" **

Arthur's picked Merlin up before. They've known each other nearly eight years, there's been plenty of times when Arthur's thrown Merlin in the swimming pool or given him a piggy back or just simply hoisted him in the air to annoy him.

They've always joked about how skinny Merlin is, but he was never this light. Never this angular and sharp edged, pointed elbow and knee scraping against Arthur's stomach as he carries him towards the nurse's office.

Terrifying words like diabetes and cancer thrust their way into Arthur's mind as he strides down the corridor, because something's clearly very wrong, an eighteen year old boy should not weigh so little. But he pushes the thoughts away and walks faster. Merlin's eyes are not yet open.

The nurse isn't in when he reaches her office, but he kicks the door open and enters anyway. As he lays his friend down on the threadbare sofa, Merlin's shirt rides up slightly on his stomach. And Arthur doesn't shock easily but he can feel a jolt run through him when he glimpses the concave hollow of Merlin's stomach. He reaches out a shaking hand to pull the shirt further up Merlin's chest and sucks in a breath as every rib bone stands out in stark detail.

Merlin's eyelids flutter and Arthur tugs his shirt back down quickly. His friend comes around slowly, almost as though even opening his eyes is a massive effort.

"What happened?" he says, and his voice is slightly slurred.

"You passed out," Arthur says, trying to sound calm and reassuring. "You're in the nurse's office."

"I passed out?" Merlin repeats dully.

"Lucky I was there to catch you," Arthur says but his smile doesn't reach his eyes.

He's looking at Merlin, really looking at him for what feels like the first time in ages, and everything he sees is troubling. There are dark shadows round Merlin's eyes, his cheekbones have hollowed out, and he's so pale he's almost translucent. Arthur's eyes travel down his friend's body, taking in the thin wrists, the loose jeans. What the hell had happened?

"You've lost a lot of weight," he says finally, and it sounds foolish so blandly stated like that, but he can't think of what else to say.

Merlin blanches but recovers quickly.

"I don't think so," he says evenly.

Arthur's mouth is dry.

"Have you looked in the mirror recently?" he says carefully. "You look quite different."

Merlin shrugs as best he can in his supine position.

"Everyone looks different recently. We're still growing and that, right?"

"But you… Merlin, you look terrible."

Merlin visibly flinches.

"Thanks," he says, swinging his legs off the couch so he can hoist himself into a sitting position.

"No, I didn't mean… I mean, you look like you might be ill."

"Seriously, thanks."

"Merlin, listen! You've obviously lost a load of weight and you just fainted for God's sake, that's not normal. Have you been feeling sick recently? Have you been to the GP?"

"Nope. I feel fine." Merlin says, straightening his shirt.

"I know it's scary," Arthur says softly. "But you know as well as I do that sudden weight loss and dizziness can be symptoms of certain types of illnesses. I'm not saying there's anything wrong; I'm just saying you should go to the doctor and have a check-up."

The word cancer looms ugly in his mind's eye, and he pushes it away again. Not Merlin, not that. There had to be another explanation.

"I'm not going to the doctor just 'cause I fainted. People faint sometimes. You fainted when we watched that sex ed video in year eight." Merlin points out, and normally Arthur would laugh or threaten him for bringing that up, but he's too worried right now to joke around.

"Look, I really think-"

"Arthur, stop!" Merlin's tone signifies this conversation is over, and as he rises to his feet Arthur springs up too, ready to object that he should at least stay to see the nurse. But there's no need because the minute Merlin stands, his legs buckle under him again.

Arthur's there before he falls, supporting him back onto the coach and making him put his head between his knees. There is silence for a few minutes as Merlin takes long, slow breaths and Arthur tries to think.

When Merlin finally raises his head, he looks straight at Arthur.

"Don't start," he says. "Just residual dizziness."

"Bullshit," Arthur says but then the door opens and the nurse enters.

"Oh hello boys, didn't know anyone was in here." She says, eyes quickly flicking over Arthur and dismissing him, then settling on Merlin.

"It's Mr Emrys, yes? How are we feeling?"

"Fine," Merlin says, just as Arthur says "He fainted."

"Oh dear," The nurse says, crouching down in front of Merlin. "Did you hit your head at all?"

"No, but he just tried to stand up and it nearly happened again," Arthur puts in and Merlin glares at him.

"Did you have any breakfast this morning?"

"Yes."

"Something hearty? Not just a chocolate bar, I know what you boys are like." The nurse smiles encouragingly but Merlin only scowls back.

"I had cereal."

And Arthur figures there's something not right about that, because Merlin's never been a fan of cereal, always had toast when he stayed at Arthurs. Said something about not liking that much milk in the morning.

The nurse places his hand on his forehead.

"Well you're a little warm, and you look quite pale. Are you feeling sick at all?"

Arthur can actually see Merlin forming the word no, then, in a split second, he seems to change his mind.

"Yeah, actually. My throat's a bit sore and I've got a headache." Merlin blinks up at the nurse. "My mum's got the flu and I've been looking after her, do you think it's that?"

And there it is. A blatant lie. Arthur happens to know for sure that Hunith hasn't been here for a week, she's gone to visit her sister in Dewsbury. He knows this because Gwaine somehow cajoled it out of Merlin and then attempted to organise an impromptu house party at Merlin's, which eventually Gwen and Freya put a stop to on account of Merlin's obvious discomfort.

_Why would he lie?_

The nurse nods, satisfied.

"Dizziness is very common with the flu. I recommend you go straight home to bed and don't come back in until you feel better." She smiles. "Catch up on some daytime telly for a few days."

Merlin doesn't look entirely pleased but he nods in agreement, and gets up from the couch. This time he does not sway and Arthur only just manages to get to his feet before Merlin's out the door.

"I'll drive you home," he says.

"I can get the bus," Merlin mutters.

"Don't be silly, I've got two free periods and then lunch, I can easily do it." Arthur insists.

The nurse smiles approvingly at him and for a short second Merlin looks completely panicked, then his face smoothes out and he shrugs in acquiescence.

~III~

The drive back to Merlin's is only twenty minutes and Arthur has no intention of wasting a second of it.

"Why did you lie?" he demands, the minute Merlin fastens his seatbelt.

"What?"

"You said your mum had the flu. She's not even here."

"Yeah well, she was going on and I had to say something. I told you I felt okay but clearly no-one believes me so I may as well get a day off school."

Arthur is silent for a few moments, absorbing this. Then:

"You don't like cereal."

"Excuse me?"

"You said you had cereal for breakfast, but you don't-"

"Jesus, is this the fucking Spanish inquisition?" Merlin explodes. "No, I didn't have breakfast because I forgot, can you blame me for the not wanting the healthy eating lecture from the school fucking nurse?"

Merlin rarely swears. And he rarely shouts at Arthur either, outside of the banter they share. The only times Arthur's seen Merlin shout before were the times when he was really distressed. Like when Hunith was in that car accident and doctors wouldn't let him in to see her, or when Freya's boyfriend had given her a black eye, or when he caught Valiant picking on the gay kid in the year below.

"Why are you being so defensive?" Arthur says quietly.

"Why are you asking so many questions?" Merlin shoots back.

"Because I'm concerned." Arthur says simply, and Merlin falls silent.

There is a long, uneasy pause.

"Thank you for trying to look out for me," Merlin says haltingly after a while. "But honestly, I'm fine. If anything, I'm just a bit stressed about my English coursework."

The pressure in Arthur's chest eases slightly. Merlin is legendary in their friendship group for being a perfectionist, he's always the one who goes most crazy at exam time, and spends the longest on his coursework and class projects. Stress combined with skipping breakfast does seem like a fairly obvious cause of fainting.

"Okay," he says and gives his friend a smile. "Promise me you'll just chill out today?"

"Promise," Merlin says, smiling back.

Arthur feels reassured. Jumping to melodramatic conclusions like cancer really had been a bit ridiculous in this situation. Merlin was just a bit overwrought.

~III~

Arthur insists on walking Merlin up to the flat.

"I'm gonna make sure you're all cosy on the sofa with a cup of tea before I go back," he says firmly and Merlin concedes.

True to his word, he forces Merlin to sit down while he goes into the kitchen to boil the kettle.

"Milk, sugar?" he calls out.

"Just black," comes the response.

Merlin's kitchen is pleasing in its familiarly – small like the rest of the flat, but with a distinct air of homeliness. There are postcards stuck up on the walls and photos; Hunith and Merlin out walking, Merlin on his sixteenth birthday, Merlin and Arthur sticking their tongues out alongside Blackpool Tower. Arthur smiles at that one. How old were they there? Thirteen, fourteen? It had taken a few months for their friendship to warm up when they first met at secondary school, but by year eight they were inseparable. Arthur can't remember ever having a friend like that before; someone that thought the same as him, had the same sense of humour, the same outlook on life. He never laughed so much with anyone else as he did with Merlin.

"This wind chime new? I don't recognise it," Arthur calls, brushing it aside as he opens the mug cupboard.

"Had it a few months," Merlin replies.

A few months? When was the last time he was here?

Arthur does a few quick calculations in his head and is surprised to realise he hasn't set foot in Merlin's flat since before Christmas.

_I practically used to live here. _

He spent a lot of time at Gwen's last year, he is aware of that, and the last few months he seemed to be flitting from Mithian's to football practise to coursework and… He doesn't know. He just doesn't seem to have found the time to come round.

Feeling slightly guilty, Arthur pours the water into the mug and begins hunting round for some food to make Merlin. Maybe some beans on toast or a bit of spaghetti, something to fill him up.

But when he opens the fridge it's almost completely empty. A jar of mustard and a tube of tomato paste, as well as some margarine and a bunch of slightly mouldy looking carrots. Frowning, Arthur turns to rifle through the cupboards. There was no cereal of course, Hunith didn't eat it either, but there was not much of anything else. A few assorted tins, some lentils and various condiments, but nothing of substance. Nothing to really eat.

Arthur walks slowly back into the living room.

"I wanted to make you lunch. But there's no food."

Merlin doesn't look round.

"Yeah, I get a bit lazy when Mum's away. Been eating takeaway and that."

"No cartons in the bin," Arthur says.

"I took the bin out last night." Merlin turns, squinting. "You're not starting again, are you?"

The image of Merlin's ribs from earlier flashes in Arthur's mind, and like one memory triggers another, he suddenly remembers a conversation he and Merlin had that time at the cottage in Wales.

Arthur had made a glorious fry up for breakfast and Merlin was laughing, protesting that there was too much food.

_"No such thing, mate," Arthur said, helping himself to more scrambled eggs. "Food's the best thing ever."_

_"But don't you ever get full?" Merlin said, and it wasn't quite as jokey as it should have been._

_"Yeah, but not for long." Arthur said, then looked at his friend. "Bet you never feel full, you eat like a bird."_

_"I do get full!" Merlin protested. "I just… don't really like it."_

_"Like what?"_

_"Feeling full." Merlin was staring at his plate. "If I eat a lot I feel really weird, like I've done something bad."_

_Arthur was going to say how mental that was, but something about Merlin's tone stopped him._

_"Is that why you don't eat much?"_

_"Sometimes," Merlin said, and for a second he looked very fragile. Then his expression cleared, and he grinned at Arthur._

_"But you eat enough for both of us."_

_"Oi!" Arthur said, flicking a crust of toast at Merlin, and the subject was forgotten._

Arthur blinks.

"You don't have flu or anything like that."

"Yes, I know." Merlin sounds annoyed.

"You passed out because… you're not eating."

The words hang heavy in the air between them. Arthur can see Merlin's chest rising up and down, the slow in and out of his measured breath.


	3. When You Cure Me

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Violence, homophobia, language.

~III~

"**I believe fairy tales like hot news,**  
**How the Snow Queen's pinched****  
****Enraptured child might desire **

**Nothing but to spell ETERNITY**  
**From jags of ice, how Rumpelstiltskin****  
****With the rage of any secret thing **

**That's named for what it is**  
**Might stamp so hard the splintering****  
****Could go on forever" **

Merlin came out three years ago. Or rather was dragged out when a photo ended up on Facebook of him kissing some guy from Avalon at a party. He only found out when he arrived at school the next Monday and Gwen pulled him into an empty classroom to deliver the bad news.

Merlin had rarely ever felt such sheer unadulterated panic as he did at that moment.

"Does everyone know?" He managed to gasp out. "Does- does Arth-"

And then the door opened and suddenly Arthur was there, flanked by Gwaine and Lance and Freya, obviously all come to find him. And Merlin couldn't look at any of them, his hands shaking with shock as he struggled to process everything that was happening.

Then Arthur moved towards him and Merlin recoiled involuntarily, thinking for one wild moment Arthur was going to hit him. But he felt solid arms around his back and it took a moment for his brain to catch up to the fact that Arthur had him wrapped in a hug.

"I don't give a fuck," Arthur said distinctly. "And fuck anyone who does."

Merlin could feel tears pricking his eyes when Arthur finally released him and he turned to face his other friends, who were all smiling.

"I always thought you had a bit of a thing for me," Gwaine said and Freya smacked him on the arm. "Ow, what, I was lightening the mood!"

"Idiot," Lance said, and stepped forward to clap Merlin on the arm. "No-one's gonna care mate, I promise."

"Wait, so, do you think you're actually, like, gay Merlin?" Freya asked. "Or bi, or…"

"Tell me Freya, what's 'like, gay'?" Gwaine snickered and earned another smack on the arm.

"I- I… I don't know. It's all a bit… I didn't have to figure it out till now." Merlin stammered.

"You don't have to figure it out now, sweetheart," Gwen said warmly. "As long as you're happy."

"Right." Arthur said firmly. "Now get a move on, we're late for History and I need to copy your notes."

And Merlin had felt so lucky in that moment, so utterly loved by all of them that it was as if he was invincible.

~III~

But despite Lance's promise, people did care. People like Cenred in the year above and his cronies, who cornered Merlin two days later when he was walking home across the playing fields.

He saw them leaning by the goalposts and tried to divert his course slightly but they'd already seen him. He quickened his pace but they easily overtook him.

"Alright Emrys? Nice photo. Really captured your fag side."

Merlin was forced to stop walking as they blocked his path, but he kept his eyes down and his mouth shut. He had no intention of escalating the situation; his best chance was that they'd get bored and leave him alone.

"I recognise that kid you were with, Mordred. The little goth with all the piercings right? I bet he's into some kinky shit."

Cenred leaned in close to Merlin.

"Question Emrys, which one of you is the girl? Is it you? Do you bend over for him and let him jack you up like the little faggot you are?"

Merlin flinched, at both the language and the proximity of Cenred.

"Or is it Pendragon you're into? Is that why he lets you hang out with him? Because you suck his cock whenever he clicks his fingers?"

Rage clenched Merlin's chest.

"Fuck off."

"What did you say to me?" Cenred asked dangerously.

"Fuck off!" Merlin shouted, and made a desperate break for it; pushing one of the boys aside and attempting to run but Cenred pulled him back easily, twisting his arm up his back.

Merlin cried out at the sudden ache in his arm but then Cenred let go in favour of spinning him round and punching him square in the jaw. There was an explosion of white hot pain and Merlin was on the ground before he knew it, moaning. Then the beating began in earnest. He huddled up in a ball to avoid the worst of the kicks but it still hurt like hell and he was out of his mind with fear because he had no idea how far they would go, whether they might actually land him in hospital or worse.

Then the kicking ceased and Merlin uncurled slightly, only to be pushed onto his back as Cenred straddled his chest. He fisted his hand in Merlin's hair and tugged it backwards sharply, so that the white of Merlin's neck was exposed, using his other hand to trace a line across Merlin's throat.

"You're lucky we don't kill you, faggot," he said softly and Merlin couldn't breathe.

And then the weight on his chest lifted as Cenred got up and the whole gang walked away, laughing. He didn't dare move for a minute or so, scared it was a trap and they'd be on their way back, but when he finally turned his head there was no sign of them.

Merlin tried to sit up but sharp lasers of agony blasted through his ribs and sides, and he fell back down, panting. It hurt too much to try and get up.

He had to call someone to come help him.

His mum was at work and besides he really didn't want her to see him like this, she'd be distraught. And Gwen was away and Lance had no phone and Freya was too prone to panic and Gwaine was terrible in any kind of serious situation.

There was nothing for it. He called Arthur.

~III~

He was brief on the phone, saying he'd got in trouble and needed a hand.

He didn't expect Arthur to come so quick but he saw a blonde head in the distance less than fifteen minutes later and breathed a sigh of relief.

He could pinpoint the exact moment Arthur spotted him, because his friend suddenly broke into a run.

"Merlin? Merlin, what the hell happened?" Arthur's voice was rough and angry but Merlin could hear the fear in it.

"M'ok. Just- trouble getting up."

"What happened?" Arthur repeated slightly frantically, kneeling down beside him.

"Cenred and them lot," Merlin managed to get out. Even talking was painful.

Arthur's jaw clenched in anger.

"I'll kill him," he said, and his face was grim.

~III~

Arthur insisted they get a taxi back to his place so he could keep an eye on Merlin, and Merlin agreed – partially because he'd rather his mum didn't see him until he was cleaned up, and partly because he really didn't want to be alone.

Arthur made Merlin lie in his bed and attempted some clean up with the family first aid kit. Apparently Merlin's hisses of pain could be heard from beyond the room because about five minutes later, Arthur's scary sister Morgana swept in and silently took the cotton wool and TCP off Arthur and began tending to Merlin herself. She didn't ask any questions but she was surprisingly efficient in dressing Merlin's wounds and even went and located a dissolvable paracetemol when Merlin was having trouble swallowing.

He got permission from his mum to stay at Arthur's that night, and they watched DVDs together in Arthur's room and talked until the early hours of the morning.

Arthur had been lying in a make shift bed on the floor but at some point he clambered up to sit next to Merlin on the bed, and when they eventually lay down to sleep, it seemed natural that Arthur would just stay there. Merlin and Arthur had shared a bed plenty of times before, especially this one, which was deliciously spacious and soft.

Just as Merlin was beginning to drift off, Arthur spoke.

"Have you… I mean… how long have you known you were gay?"

"Mmm? Oh. I don't know. Maybe a few months now."

He could see Arthur looking at him in the dim light of single lamp, clearly wanting him to elaborate.

"I guess, I thought it was weird I didn't really like any girls, and when me and Freya went out that time it was really awkward and I started to wonder…"

"So, on Saturday…"

"Um, well, I was just chatting to this guy and he gave me one of his beers and it was just nice…"

Merlin tailed off, feeling strange to be talking about this with Arthur. He didn't know if his friend was trying to prove he was comfortable with Merlin's sexuality, or if he was genuinely curious.

"Go on," Arthur prompted.

_In for a penny…_

"Yeah well, we ended up outside and we were sat on that little bench thing and I was just talking about something and then he just… kissed me."

It was the first time Merlin had kissed a boy and he'd been surprised by the smoky sweetness of Mordred's mouth, the gentle pressure of his tongue. It was… kind of wonderful, actually. And all the more so for being unexpected. Despite Merlin getting to grips with liking boys, he harboured no hopes of them liking him back. He assumed he'd have just a little luck as he always had, what with his sticky out ears and awkward frame and general clumsiness. Who in their right mind would want him?

But Mordred had. Had genuinely seemed to like him, been interested in what he had to say, been attracted to him enough to kiss him. It had been a rare moment of pure happiness for Merlin.

"Didn't know bloody Vivian was sneaking round with her camera phone though," Merlin said bitterly. So much for coming out of the closet when he was good and ready. It was more like the closet door had been ripped open by a .

He turned to face Arthur and winced at the sudden pressure on his ribs. He could see Arthur tense up, even in the relative darkness.

"I really am gonna kill Cenred, you know."

"Don't," Merlin said. "You'll get in trouble. It's not worth it."

"It's definitely worth it." Arthur said determinedly.

"They'll probably just come after me again," Merlin said and felt sick at the thought.

"No-one's coming after you again. Consider me your personal bodyguard."

Merlin giggled.

"Like in that Whitney Houston film?"

"If you start singing, I'm officially resigning." Arthur said and they both laughed.

Then Arthur was silent for a while and Merlin began to wonder if he'd fallen asleep when his friend suddenly spoke.

"I was scared today. When I first saw you from the edge of the field, it looked like you were… like you were…"

Arthur's voice cracked slightly and on impulse Merlin reached out under the covers and took his hand.

"I'm fine," he said and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Arthur squeezed back.

"Good. Don't know what I'd do without you."

And then, so quickly Merlin often looked back in years to come wondering if he'd simply imagined it, Arthur leaned forward and brushed his lips against Merlin's. Then he rolled back over and turned the light out.

They didn't talk again that night, and in the morning Arthur was gone, leaving Merlin a note to lie in and not worry about school. So he spent most of the morning in Arthur's bed until Not-So-Scary-After-All-Morgana drove him back to his house, where he spent most of the afternoon wondering what the night before had been about.

They never did bring it up again but the next day Merlin returned to school to find Arthur had been suspended for a week for fighting with Cenred. Cenred, who had been on his last warning, had been expelled.

~III~

For some reason, it's that tiny kiss/not kiss that Merlin thinks of now, with Arthur standing in front of him demanding an explanation.

Because once when he was vulnerable, Arthur fixed him; took him home to his bed and kissed him and protected him. And now he's vulnerable again and some small part of him wants Arthur to fix him a second time, to take him in his arms and swear to fight Merlin's demons like he fought them three years ago.

But that was then and this is now and Merlin no longer believes in fairy tales where everything comes right in the end.

And Arthur doesn't want him and Arthur cannot save him.

He suddenly feels horribly tired. He wants Arthur to go, wants his friend to forget all about this. He wants to be left alone to his bad choices and his terrible loneliness and his empty cupboards.

"Merlin? Are you even listening?"

Merlin drags his eyes back to Arthur's face and sees that same look of pity Arthur's been wearing ever since he woke up in the nurse's office. For some reason, it infuriates him.

"No, because you're boring me."

Arthur's jaw tightens but he won't lose his cool, Merlin can see that. His friend is determined to be diplomatic and caring and a hundred other irritating things that Merlin can't stand right now. He doesn't want to be treated with kid gloves or "understood", especially not by Arthur. It only knocks him down another peg, makes him the charity case that Arthur looks after rather than the best friend he used to be.

Still, there's one advantage ex-best friends always have. They know exactly how to wind each other up.

"I'm just worried," Arthur starts again, and Merlin sneers.

"Do you have to be such a girl, Arthur? I skipped a couple of meals, there's no need to go all Trisha on me."

"Right, well it's clearly not just a couple of meals, is it?" Arthur says and he's beginning to sound annoyed so Merlin presses his advantage.

"Just because I don't gorge myself on carbs like all you super-jock football players," Merlin jeers, and then adds, in a dead-on Valiant impression, "Maybe I should go get a protein shake, bro!"

"Stop pretending this isn't a problem! For God's sake Merlin, there's no food in your house."

Merlin plays his trump card.

"How would you know how much food is usually in my house?"

"What?"

"When was the last time you were in my house? Weeks? Months? Can you even remember?"

Arthur tries to bluster.

"So I haven't been round recently. I've been-"

"Busy, I know," Merlin interrupts. "Busy with Mithian, busy with football, busy with anything and anyone that isn't me."

Arthur seems at a loss for words.

"I see you every day," he eventually says.

"Yeah," Merlin says. "For five minutes between class, or fifteen at lunch before you have to go. But you always wave at me in the corridor, I'll give you that."

"Where is all this coming from?"

"It's coming from the fact that I've barely seen you in three months and suddenly you think you have a right to accuse me of having a problem. It doesn't work like that!"

Merlin's shouting now and he doesn't even know why because he doesn't want to fight with Arthur, in fact all he wants to do is sleep, just curl up on the couch right there and pretend none of this is happening.

Arthur looks… it's difficult to tell. Still that damn pity there, but there's guilt mixed in too, and concern.

It's too much and Merlin doesn't want it.

"Can you go please?" He says.

"Merlin-"

"I want you to go. I need to rest. Can you just leave?"

Arthur clearly wants to refuse but Merlin can see he's also totally wrong-footed by the things Merlin said to him, not wanting to spark another row.

"I… alright. But this conversation is on hold, not over, okay? I'm not letting this go."

Merlin doesn't bother to reply. As far as he's concerned, this conversation is over forever.

He leaves very slowly, casting Merlin pleading looks as he goes, hoping for a reprieve. But Merlin looks away, lying down on the couch and closing his eyes until Arthur finally gets the message.

~III~

He must have fallen asleep because when he wakes up it's dark outside, and his phone is buzzing. There's a new text from Arthur that simply reads 'Check outside your door'. When he does he finds two grocery bags full to the brim with food.

It almost makes Merlin smile. He can see some of his favourite foods in there; chocolate digestives and raspberries and fresh tagliatelle, and he feels a pang that he's sure is nothing to do with hunger as he empties both bags into the bin.


	4. And I Guess That I Just Don't Know

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin

Warnings: Drug use, minor violence, language, possible dub-con (some people would argue that sexual relations under the influence of drugs is dub-con)

A/N: This chapter is FULL OF EMOTION. Sorry if it's a bit OTT.

~III~

**"Close now, this nothing-**

**hungry thing that fills****  
****him, that empties him…"**

A week passes. After months of absence, Arthur is suddenly everywhere. Waiting for Merlin outside school, sitting with him at lunch, even following him to the library.

Arthur wants the truth but Merlin's smarter than that. He knows that he has the stamina to stonewall his friend out for a very long time. Arthur does not. He is impatient above all else; he has no sticking power. He will grow bored, and forget, and Merlin will be left alone again.

It's not quite clear to Merlin why he wants that, why he wants to be left alone, but he knows that's the way it will happen so why delay the inevitable?

He hates Arthur a little for doing this but not as much as he hates the small part of himself that's glad, that's pathetically grateful that Arthur's spending time with him again. Even if it is only out of pity.

Merlin keeps the conversation light. When Arthur asks him if he's eaten today or offers him a snack he just pretends not to hear or changes the topic. Occasionally Arthur will bring the subject up directly, only when they're alone together, and Merlin will simply gather together his belongings and walk away.

Arthur learns, eventually. He stops mentioning it, keeps the conversation on neutral ground, but Merlin can still feel his friend's eyes on him, full of concern.

He hates it and he loves it.

Then it's three weeks since he fainted and Merlin senses Arthur's getting the message because he seems less intense when they're together, quicker to slip into the easy banter they used to share. It doesn't come naturally to Merlin anymore but he plays along. It's this casual attempt at normality that eventually does for him when Mithian announces a party at her house this Friday.

"I can't go," he says automatically. "I'm busy on Friday. Gotta see my Gran."

"Shame it's not Saturday," Arthur says and Merlin nods in agreement.

He realises he's been trapped too late, as Arthur turns to Mithian and says:

"Babe, could we do it on Saturday instead? I mean, your parents are away the whole weekend right?"

"Yeah, why not?" Mithian says, smiling at Merlin. "Can't have a party without Arthur's best friend after all."

She's nice, genuinely nice, and that just makes it so much harder. Merlin glares at Arthur, convinced he did this on purpose. And he can't back out now because that would look odd, would give the lie to this whole 'normal' façade he's been carefully constructing the past few weeks.

"Great," he says, forcing a smile and Gwaine claps him on the back.

"Sweet! Now we just need to find the lucky lady going as my date."

"I heard the women's prison is on day release Saturday," Freya deadpans and Gwaine sticks his tongue out at her and Gwen throws a chip at him.

Merlin can't focus on his friends. Is he imagining it or does Arthur keep flicking glances at him? What exactly is he playing at?

~III~

Standing in front of his wardrobe on Saturday night, Merlin feels sick. He knows Arthur's going to try to talk to him tonight, he can just feel it, and he's not up for the fight. He's too tired to lie. All he can do is make an appearance, avoid Arthur as best he can, and then sneak home as soon as possible.

He wriggles into a black t-shirt and then pulls on a long sleeved black and white plaid shirt. They're not noticeably loose but his black jeans are another matter, threatening to slip right down past his hips. He ends up working a new notch into his belt and practically tying his trousers in place.

When he looks at himself in the mirror, the effect is… underwhelming. His ears look impossibly large, even hidden amongst messy tufts of his scarecrow hair, and his face looks sharp and worn. The black smudges under his eyes look ridiculous somehow, like he's smeared eye shadow there. He feels a sudden stab of envy that girls have make up to cover all of this up.

_(who are you trying to impress anyway?)_

No-one. He couldn't even if he tried. He feels sickened suddenly to think what Arthur sees when he looks at him. Does Arthur wince when he casts an eye over him, the messy, boney, awkward, gangling calamity of him? What was that Arthur had said in the nurse's office?

_("merlin, you look terrible")_

Of course Arthur thinks that. Arthur who is quite literally taking the piss with his big blue eyes and golden skin and Greek God physique. It's like a fairy-tale, with Arthur as the handsome prince and Merlin as the horrible creature he has to defeat – the witch or the troll or the monster – to win the princess.

Merlin decides he's going to drink a lot tonight.

~III~

He's on edge from the moment he gets there, he's never liked parties that much and there seems to be so much riding on tonight, he's nearly shaking with nerves. But Gwaine, bless him, presses a beer into his hand, and then another when that one's done and he feels better. Calmer. He's only seen Arthur briefly so far, he's been with Mithian mostly, fulfilling the hosting duties.

But he's perched on the couch when he notices Arthur making his way directly over to him, and he gets up quickly and cuts through the kitchen to the back garden, losing himself in the crowd of people.

He doesn't know if Arthur saw him go out but he doesn't want to take any chances, so he prises the door open to the shed at the bottom of the garden and slips inside. The light's already on and it takes him a moment to realise there's someone else in there.

"What the- oh Merlin, it's you."

He blinks at the figure crouched on the floor and realises it's only Gilli. He and Merlin used to sit together in maths, and though they don't speak much anymore, they're on friendly terms.

"Gilli? Why are you in-"

Merlin trails off as he finally takes in the table Gilli's crouched in front of and sees a driving license and a little packet of white powder.

_Oh._

"Sorry, I'll just-" he mumbles, turning towards the door in embarrassment.

"Relax Merlin, it's just coke." Gilli sounds amused, like he used to when Merlin would solve the equation in half the time the rest of the class did and leave Mr Benson scratching his head in bemusement.

"Yeah I know, I just-"

"Look, I'm guessing you burst in here because you wanted to get away from that party as much as I did, so just sit down and stop freaking out."

Merlin must still look sceptical because Gilli laughs again, but not meanly.

"It's not an episode of Grange Hill, Merlin. I'm not gonna peer pressure you into doing drugs or anything. I'm just saying you're welcome to share my hide-out."

Merlin contemplates for a moment, then sits down on a deck chair.

"Why are you hiding?" he asks.

Gilli shrugs, shaking out a little powder onto the table.

"Not exactly my scene. I came to see if anyone wanted to buy any…" he gestures to the table. "But it's not really that kind of vibe tonight."

Merlin can't help but be fascinated by what Gilli's doing, flattening and chopping the powder until he's carved out a neat white line.

"What about you?" Gilli says, startling him out of his reverie.

"Oh. I just… Not in the mood, I guess." Merlin says.

He's trying to keep his tone light but from the way Gilli's looking at him, he's not sure he's been successful. But Gilli doesn't say anything, just nods at him. Then:

"Do you want some?"

The word 'no' is forming on Merlin's lips when he hesitates. He's never taken anything before, not beyond the joints passed round at parties and some weird pill at a festival that Gwaine said was herbal speed and made Merlin feel like someone had taken a whisk to his stomach.

Arthur doesn't do drugs. He thinks it'll mess with his football game, thinks it's for burnouts and losers.

_Fuck Arthur._

Merlin nods and heads over to the table.

"Wait," Gilli says and he pulls a fiver from his pocket, rolling it up into a tube. "Make it easier."

He hands Merlin the little tube and Merlin feels a brief flash of nerves before he squares his shoulders and dips his head. He puts the end of the tube to the line and snorts.

Nothing happens. Gilli takes the fiver back, nodding in approval as he cuts another line for himself.

"Is this it?" Merlin says and Gilli grins and tells him to give it a minute.

"This might help," he says, and he licks the end of his finger and dips it in the remaining powder. Then, without warning, he sticks his finger in Merlin's mouth. Merlin is so shocked it takes him a moment to realise that Gilli is rubbing the granules onto his gums. It tastes sharp and salty and the whole experience is bizarre and intimate.

Then Gilli withdraws his finger, grinning.

"Thanks for the warning," Merlin says eventually, because he can't think of what else to say. Gilli just waggles his eyebrows and goes back to his own line.

Then Merlin's gums start to go numb and it freaks him out a little but Gilli tells him it's normal. So Merlin sits back and tries to decide how he feels.

Nice, he thinks. He was expecting some big dramatic effect, an instant kick, but it seems to be coming on slowly. He doesn't feel trippy or out of his body or hyped up. He just feels kind of happy, and ever so slightly giggly, and a little bit turned on.

He doesn't quite realise he's said this last bit out loud until Gilli snorts in amusement.

"That's how it goes for some people."

And Merlin's not sure what gives him the courage but he fixes his eyes on Gilli and says, "Is that how it goes for you?"

There's silence for a moment but Merlin weirdly doesn't feel nervous or embarrassed. Whether or not it's the placebo effect, he feels like the coke is giving him some kind of new confidence. And he knows he's right about this, knew how Gilli felt the minute he stuck his finger in Merlin's mouth.

Gilli doesn't speak, just beckons him over. He puts the rolled up fiver back in Merlin's hand and guides his head back to the table and Merlin takes the second line like a pro.

Then he looks up and there's only a spilt second of eye contact before Gilli's mouth is on his.

It's not like Mordred, or even the small handful of guys Merlin's kissed since then. It's harsh and a bit desperate and Gilli tastes like salt and his tongue is bruising in Merlin's mouth.

They end up on the floor, Gilli on top of Merlin, grinding his hips into him and it hurts and Merlin is so fucking hard and he bucks upwards and Gilli presses him down again, mouthing at Merlin's neck.

Gilli pulls Merlin's shirt over his head, tossing it aside, and runs his hand under his t-shirt. He grazes a nipple and Merlin whimpers slightly.

Then he's tugging at Merlin's jeans and Merlin's desperately trying to help undo his belt, then Gilli suddenly pauses and says "I don't have… do you have…" and it takes a second for Merlin's brain to catch up, and then another second for him to decide he doesn't care.

"Do it anyway," he hisses in Gilli's ear, releasing his belt for a moment to press his hand into Gilli's crotch and Gilli actually moans.

And Merlin doesn't care that this is his first time, that he's thought about this for years, that he always hoped it'd be special, and it'd be with someone who loved him.

More fairy-tales. Who fucking needs them?

And Gilli's finally got his belt off and he's working at Merlin's zipper and Merlin's breath is coming in short fast pants because he wants he wants he wants…

Then the shed door opens, and Arthur's standing there.

~III~

It takes Arthur about five seconds to fully understand the picture in front of him, and when he does he blushes in a way that Merlin hasn't seen for years.

"Shit, I'm so sorry-" he begins and Merlin can feel rather than see Gilli roll his eyes.

"It's fine Pendragon, could you just take your cock block somewhere else please?"

There are so many emotions playing across Arthur's face that Merlin's having trouble keeping up, especially in his addled state. Then like a shield coming down, Arthur's face closes off.

"Sorry," he says once more and turns to go. Then catches sight of the table.

_Oh shit._

When Arthur turns back round he looks genuinely, unbelievably furious.

"What the fuck is this?" he spits.

"What does it look like, fuckwit?" Gilli says; his patience with Arthur's interruption fully exhausted.

Arthur makes a sudden motion, like he's about to hit Gilli. But he just leans down and pushes him, so that Gilli rolls off Merlin and crashes into the shed wall.

"Get up. Now." Arthur says to Merlin and he doesn't wait for an answer, grabbing Merlin's wrist and dragging him to his feet.

"Ow, what the fuck, Arthur?" Merlin says because he's still in a daze and he knows Arthur doesn't like drugs but this all seems like a bit of an overreaction.

"I'm taking you home," Arthur says, still gripping his arm.

"The fuck you are." Gilli says, scrambling to his feet. "He's not your dog Pendragon, you don't get to collar him whenever you feel like it."

"Don't you fucking push me," says Arthur, and his voice is deadly quiet. "You gave my friend drugs and then you took advantage of him. I should fucking kill you."

"Jesus, Arthur, that's not what happened!" Merlin says, aghast, but Arthur doesn't respond, just drags him towards the door. And Merlin barely has time to do up his zip before he's pulled blinking into the night sky, catching one last glimpse of Gilli as the shed door bangs shut.

Arthur doesn't speak till they reach the car and even then it's only a terse "Get in," as he shoves Merlin towards the passenger door.

~III~

The fog has begun to clear from Merlin's mind as Arthur nears his house. But he still feels totally overwhelmed and over stimulated, the night's events playing in his mind. The high's wearing off but he's still drunk and a million different feelings are bubbling up inside of him.

But when Arthur frogmarches him into his flat and all but throws him down onto the couch, one feeling rises to the foreground of his mind.

_Anger._

"You finished with the fucking caveman act then, Arthur?" he hisses, and Arthur looks more furious than he had in the shed, if that were even possible.

"Don't turn this round on me! What the hell were you thinking? Fucking cocaine, Merlin!"

"It was a bit of coke Arthur, I wasn't exactly shooting up in a back alley," Merlin yells back. "It's called having fun!"

"And that was fun, was it? Getting so off your face you'll let any random guy touch you up?"

"It wasn't some random guy! And get the stick out of your ass Arthur, that's what people do at parties, get wasted and have sex!"

"Oh and that's what you wanted, is it? Losing your virginity to Gilli IN A SHED, while you're high as fuck on drugs he gave you?"

It stings that Arthur knows he's a virgin, stings that he brings it up now.

"Hypocrite!" Merlin spits. "I walked in on you and Gwen two years ago at a party and I didn't go all pyscho on you!"

"Because that was completely consensual!"

"So was tonight!" Merlin can't remember being this angry in a long time. "Gilli was right, you do treat me like your fucking dog!"

Arthur slams his fist against the wall.

"I was only trying to protect you from your OWN FUCKING STUPIDITY! I didn't want you to wake up tomorrow and regret making such an awful mistake!"

"It's my mistake to make!" Merlin's aware that he's screaming now and he doesn't care. "I should be allowed to make my own mistakes!"

And suddenly Arthur is right in front of him and he doesn't say anything, just lays his palm flat on Merlin's stomach and says, very quietly:

"Like this?"

And Merlin doesn't twig what he's saying for a second, and then he does, and he slaps Arthur's hand away like it's on fire.

"I told you to drop that," he warns.

"Why?" Arthur says, and his voice is dangerous. "There's nothing wrong, right? That's what you told me, isn't it?"

"Right," Merlin grits out.

"Then I believe you. Because friends don't lie to each other, do they?" Arthur's tone hasn't changed and it makes the hair on Merlin's neck stand up.

"You're perfectly healthy, isn't that right?"

"Yes!" Merlin half-shouts.

And then, out of nowhere, Arthur is tugging Merlin's t-shirt up.

"Show me, then. Let's see what this perfectly healthy body looks like."

"Get off!" Merlin growls, pushing at Arthur's hands but Arthur's stronger and he manages to pull the shirt over Merlin's head even though he's fighting him tooth and claw. Then Arthur's half-dragging him, half-carrying him towards the door to his bedroom and Merlin realises what he intends to do, pull Merlin in front of that full length mirror and make him stand there and fuck…

He jabs his elbow back into Arthur's stomach and hears a satisfying grunt of pain, then he follows it up by kicking Arthur in the shin and Arthur grunts again, allowing Merlin to wriggle out his grasp and turning to face his friend. And Arthur puts his hands up in supplication, as if he knows it's gone too far, but it's too fucking late for that so Merlin socks him in the jaw as hard as he can. Arthur reels back and Merlin raises his fist again but Arthur catches it this time and wrestles him down to the floor and Merlin's kicking out desperately but Arthur's so much stronger and Merlin's running out of energy, his limbs and joints are already protesting the exertion and he feels light headed…

And Arthur's sitting on his chest, pinning his hands down, not hard, just enough so Merlin can't hit him and Merlin's opening his mouth to unleash a tirade of invective when he focuses his eyes on Arthur's face and Arthur's… crying?

He's properly crying, tears coming down his face, his breath hitching in his throat. And it's so utterly shocking that Merlin goes completely limp.

"Arthur?" he says gently, and Arthur climbs off him, crawling across the floor to sit with his back against the far wall, head in his hands.

Merlin sits up to look at him.

"Arthur?" he says again, and his friend looks up, eyes wet.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so sorry Merlin. I didn't mean-"

Merlin crawls over till he's sat in front of Arthur. And he doesn't really see the eighteen year old Arthur in front of him, more the thirteen year old boy that woke in Merlin's bed from a nightmare once, weeping because he'd seen his dead mother in his sleep.

Merlin had rolled over that time and hugged his friend until they both slept again. But this time he can't do more than kneel in front of Arthur and watch him, shivering slightly as the cold air caresses his naked back.


	5. Martyrs

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Language, non-explicit discussion of an attempted rape.

~III~

"**Dry priest at the shrine**  
**of nothing. Maid-saint  
fierce against the flesh  
(burn it, burn it) denouncing  
the witch in himself, see,  
he's mounting the stake,  
no, becoming it and  
the tinder and the heartless  
blaze you might mistake  
for holiness." **

When Arthur was twelve, a business associate of Uther's had come to spend the night at their house. His father had secured a lucrative deal with the man's company and they were in the mood to celebrate. Simon Soot his name was, Arthur remembers all these years later. He sometimes wonders if that name will be burned into his brain forever.

The rest of his memory of that night is patchy. He remembers the dinner, in which Uther and Simon got through two bottles of wine. When Uther left the room, Morgana managed to persuade Simon to slip her a glass of her own and she had sipped on it coyly as they sat there. Arthur had been bored, and somewhat frustrated for a reason he couldn't put his finger on. It was that vague dissatisfaction he'd often had as a child – the nagging sense that something was happening that he didn't understand, something adult and secret. Something to do with the way Morgana was acting and the way Simon was looking at her. Arthur didn't quite like it.

But then he had finally been excused and had gone off to play video games, laughter from the dining room ringing through the whole house. He had gone to bed an hour or so later. And then…

He'd awoken in the darkness, ripped from sleep by a noise. Not a loud one but a persistent one, a faint keening sound coming from along the corridor. He got out of bed and padded down the hallway, head still thick with sleep.

It was coming from Morgana's room.

Even at twelve, Arthur knew this wasn't unusual. Morgana had nightmares at least once a week, and the event had grown less alarming the more it occurred. He used to go in her room and sit with her, but as she grew older and hit the full stride of her teenage years, she had become secretive and jealous of her privacy. She started sending him away.

So he paused in the hallway, unsure of what to do. It sounded like a bad one but would she thank him for bursting in? He hovered for a moment, then heard a sort of strangled gasp and made a decision.

The room was too dark to see when he pushed open the door so he automatically flicked the light on.

And Morgana was lying on the bed on her back but she wasn't asleep, she was awake and struggling and there was a man sat on her stomach, covering her mouth with his hand.

"'Gana?" Arthur said even as he was trying to understand the scene in front of him, and the man turned to look at him and it was Simon.

"Hey Arthur," he said. "Hey. Your sister and I are just playing a game."

He sounded very calm and composed, and Arthur had that feeling again, that something was going on that he wasn't privy to, something that he really shouldn't intrude on.

"Run on back to bed," Simon said reassuringly and Arthur nodded, because Morgana did a lot of things that were strange to him these days and he supposed that this was just one of them.

The only thing was. Morgana was crying.

And that was weird because she never really cried. Uther sometimes called her 'my little ice queen' in a tone of admiration, as though Morgana never crying was something to be very proud of. Ever since he'd noticed that, Arthur had tried hard not to cry as well, not even when he slipped in the snow and broke his arm and it had really hurt. He kept his eyes screwed up tight all the way to the hospital and when the nurses told Uther how brave he'd been not to make any fuss, his father said "That's my boy," and Arthur had beamed with pride, even through the pain.

Arthur looked back at Simon and then again at the tears streaming down Morgana's face.

He took a step back into the hallway.

"Good boy," Simon said encouragingly.

Arthur breathed out for a second. Then:

"Dad! DAD!"

The strength of his own shout surprised Arthur and almost immediately he heard a corresponding noise from the floor above, where Uther slept.

Simon jumped up from the bed like he'd been shot. He was still scrabbling to do up his trousers and button his shirt when Uther charged into the room and stopped deadly still.

He took the scene in with a glance, Morgana weeping on the bed and Arthur pale faced at the door and Simon trying desperately to dress himself.

Arthur never heard before or since a sound like the one his father made at that moment.

It was inhumane, animalistic.

And then there was fighting and shouting and neighbours and police and at some point Arthur crawled into bed with Morgana and hugged himself against her like when they were little. She was very cold and he couldn't stop her shaking. Then Dr Gauis came and took her into another room and Arthur didn't know what to do so he just stayed huddled in her bed, waiting.

There were lots of adult conversations over the next few days, whispered fragments overheard in the hall and telephone calls made late at night. Arthur didn't understand most of it but he remembered his father saying over and over "He never did anything. We got there in time. He never did anything."

And it was true but it took Arthur many years to understand that it didn't really matter that Simon never followed through on his assault because Morgana was still changed, irrevocably. She talked less and seldom smiled, drifting round the house like a ghost. Then later came the late nights and the drinking and the screaming rows that she and Uther conducted at top volume when she staggered in at three in the morning on a school night. For those next three years, Arthur's home life seemed to be characterised by noise and silence; the loud and bitter words regularly exchanged between father and daughter punctuated by long periods where no-one talked – silent, drawn out dinners and muted greetings if they happened to pass one another in the hall.

Arthur didn't know how to talk to her. It was like she was a wholly different person from the sister he'd grown up with. And there was always this terrible… thing… between them: the truth of what he had seen that night, the momentary hesitation before he'd called for help. Sometimes Arthur wanted to ask her if she hated him, even a little bit, but that night was now a forbidden topic in their house, like Igraine was, and Arthur never found himself strong or brave enough to break that silence.

He never dared bring it up with Uther either, not since the day after it happened when he sought out his father in his study and asked if he was in trouble for not looking after Morgana properly. And Uther hadn't said a word, just knelt down and gripped Arthur into a bone crushing hug. Arthur had stayed still, heart fluttering in his chest as he felt his father sob against him, feeling helpless and sad and afraid.

Things did improve, eventually, and Morgana made the decision to go to university in Brighton when Arthur was sixteen. He missed her, despite how fraught their relationship had been the last few years, and he was glad when he and Gwen began seeing each other and he had an excuse not to go home to an empty house every night.

~III~

He knows it's not the same. He knows what he walked in on in the shed was not akin to what he walked in on when he was a little kid. The sudden brutal shock that jolted through him when he first opened that door was an instantaneous reaction, one that he'd managed to reason away within a few seconds.

_(before his brain caught up to his eyes all he could see was Gilli on top of Merlin, pinning him down, fumbling at his jeans, and Merlin's lips are parted and his eyes are closed and Arthur can't tell if he's in ecstasy or agony, if he wants this or if he can't stop it)_

But when Gilli turns around he looks irritated rather than guilty. And Merlin looks shocked and slightly embarrassed and something else that Arthur can't quite recognise. But he doesn't look afraid.

_It's not like before_ Arthur's thinking even as he stammers out an apology.

And then Gilli deadpans something about him being a cock block and Arthur feels an inexplicable flash of rage, one that has nothing to do with his previous fears.

He's never really paid much attention to Gilli before, but right there and then he decides he doesn't like him. What is Merlin doing in here with him? What is it about Gilli of all people that's managed to bypass Merlin's natural reserve and seduce him into grinding in a shed? Merlin deserves so much better than this.

_Not any of your business, is it?_

No. It's not. Although all he's been trying to do recently is make Merlin his business, get to the bottom of what's happening with his friend. And tonight… he hoped they could talk, sit outside with a beer like old times and give Arthur the chance to get the truth from his friend, to show him he was there to support him…

_Men plan, God laughs,_ as Gaius always used to say.

Arthur makes sure his face is carefully blank as he turns towards the door.

But something on the table catches his eye and like a piece of a horrible puzzle falling into place, he thinks he finally understands.

"What the fuck is this?" he says and he can feel fury coursing through his veins, quick and violent.

Gilli says something but he's not listening, he's looking at Merlin's eyes and they're glazed over, he's clearly out of his fucking head.

An image flashes into his head of Simon pouring Morgana a glass of wine, watching her eagerly as she drank it down.

He can feel his blood pounding through his whole body as he flicks his eyes back to Gilli and Arthur has a sudden overwhelming desire to hit him, to hurt him, badly, because he's not twelve years old anymore and he knows how to protect people now.

But he can't trust himself to stop if he starts so he settles for pushing Gilli out of the way and reaching down to yank Merlin to his feet. Merlin protests but allows himself to be manhandled. Up close Arthur can see the fine sheen of sweat on his face, the darting of his eyes.

He tells Merlin he's taking him home and Gilli actually dares to object.

"Don't you fucking push me," Arthur says, another blast of rage spiking through his body like a shot of adrenaline.

"You gave my friend drugs and then you took advantage of him. I should fucking kill you."

The urge to hurt Gilli returns, strongly, but Merlin is more important so he fixes Gilli with one final stare and then pushes open the shed door, dragging Merlin out into the cool air of night.

He doesn't trust himself to speak all the way home, his mind whirling with a barrage of unconnected thoughts and memories. Somewhere at the heart of it all, he knows he overreacted. Knows that seducing someone on drugs is not the same as getting a fifteen year old child drunk and then attempting to…

But the rest of his body is crying out with the need to protect Merlin, possibly the only other person in the world he feels as strongly about as Morgana. And he's been so afraid recently because Merlin had seemed so brittle these last few weeks, smaller in every sense of the word.

Merlin's not a fighter on a good day. So how can he hope to protect himself when he barely weighs a hundred pounds and hardly has the energy to walk to class anymore? And Arthur knows its paranoid but some days he believes the world is full of bad people, out to hurt the ones he loves. Maybe's it's his father's influence, seeing enemies in shadows and making it his policy in business to trust no one, but Arthur is wary of the world.

And Merlin has always been too trusting.

When they arrive at the flat Arthur wonders if he should just let this go for the night, put Merlin to bed and have the conversation tomorrow. But then Merlin stumbles slightly as he gets out of the car and it isn't the fall that gets Arthur so much as the slightly inane smile that crosses his friend's face, and Jesus, Arthur thinks disgustedly, he's still fucked.

He's enraged all over again and when they finally get in the flat he opens his mouth to speak but Merlin gets in first.

And then they're arguing and it's loud and heated and Arthur wants to stop and talk properly but at the same time he's so mad and he can't hold it in.

Then Merlin mentions Gwen and that twists in Arthur's gut, still, after all this time, so he raises his voice louder and thanks God that Hunith is still on the night shift.

Merlin echoes Gilli's line about Arthur treating him like his dog and goddamnit, that one stings. Arthur smashes his fist into the wall, barely registering the sudden ache in his hand.

"I was only trying to protect you from your OWN FUCKING STUPIDITY! I didn't want you to wake up tomorrow and regret making such an awful mistake!"

"It's my mistake to make!" Merlin's screaming at him. "I should be allowed to make my own mistakes!"

_Mistakes._

Clearly he's made a few of his own recently. Not hanging out with Merlin. Not noticing he was ill. Not being able to talk about it properly.

So many mistakes so far that he can't bear another one. He will not allow silence to come between him and Merlin, allow it to rob him of the chance of helping like it did with Morgana for all those years.

He used to think Uther was right. That not bringing up topics like his mother or Simon would save pain for all of them. Now he thinks they should have talked about it, even if it hurt. Better to be sad together than to each drift around in their own private, unutterable grief.

His father's life is characterised by his loss of Igraine. Morgana's was nearly ruined by the loss of her innocence. Arthur will not, _cannot_ lose Merlin to this thing that consumes him.

And that's why he steps towards his friend and lays his palm flat on Merlin's stomach, feeling the uncushioned flesh beneath his hand.

"Like this?"

Merlin reacts badly but Arthur's expecting that. He's thinking weirdly of science fiction, of horror movies where they have to exorcise the evil spirit, make the alien show itself so they can bring the pod person back to life.

But Merlin keeps fighting so he tries to trap him, to force him to see the truth, see what he's doing to himself. He feels slightly unhinged as he tears at Merlin's t-shirt but he can't stop now, Merlin has to know, has to look at himself and understand where this path ends.

_The mirror_ Arthur thinks vaguely as he starts to drag Merlin across the room and it's like pulling a child really because Merlin has no weight behind him, no strength.

But he does have a very sharp elbow, which he jams into Arthur's stomach with a surprising amount of force. It isn't enough to make him relax his grip, but the kick to the shin is.

Arthur lets Merlin go, the sharp pain in his leg cutting through the weird haze of the last few minutes and he is suddenly appalled to see Merlin in front of him, half naked and shaking with rage and fear. And he never wants Merlin to feel afraid of him, never ever. He raises his hands in what is meant to be a soothing gesture but he can see Merlin's too far gone for that and he manages to brace himself just in time for the fist that crashes into his jaw. It hurts but Arthur brushes the pain aside, automatically raising his hand to catch the next punch Merlin sends his way and trying, as gently as he can, to subdue Merlin to the ground.

He needs to speak to him, to apologise, but he can't do that when Merlin's trying to hit him so he pins his arms. Merlin's thrashing about beneath him although he looks almost spent, his breath coming in short gasps.

Arthur can feel Merlin very acutely, feel his body. The wrists he has pinioned to the floor are terrifying small and snappable, and is he imagining it or can he feel Merlin's pulse beating through his hands? Merlin's body is radiating heat despite his lack of t-shirt, warm from the exertion of their fight. His stomach is as wretchedly concave as Arthur remembers it from the nurse's office, his ribs still poke out through his papery skin. He looks like a famine victim from the news. He looks like one of those martyrs from religious art who give their souls to Jesus and then fast their lives away. He looks…

Arthur doesn't realise he's actually crying until he tastes salt at the corner of his mouth. And his first, ridiculous, thought is that he's glad his father isn't there to see him; because he'd be so ashamed.


	6. Solace

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Language, non-explicit discussion of an attempted rape.

A/N: A slighly fluffier chapter now, to get away from all the mental angst

~III~

"**Inside him, the slowing****  
****the faltering,****  
****voltage.****  
****But still**

**there's this brilliant****  
****flicker on the surface,****  
****arc lights****  
****on a dragged canal"**

Arthur keeps saying he's sorry and he's stopped crying now but he still looks utterly distraught.

"Please don't apologise," Merlin says. He's feeling horribly confused and weirdly guilty and everything is just too much, he needs it all to slow down…

"You and Gilli… I thought." Arthur stops, pained. "When I first saw you, I thought…" He trails off again.

Merlin waits as Arthur collects himself.

"It reminded me of… the thing with Morgana."

Merlin feels a cold weight in his stomach because he knows exactly what Arthur's talking about. He always calls it 'the thing with Morgana', unable to be any less vague after all this time because Merlin knows using the word rape or assault or even attack is too painful, too harsh on his friend's tongue.

The first time Arthur mentioned it they were sixteen and it was the week after Morgana had left for university. Uther was away for the weekend and Merlin had taken advantage of the man's absence to spend the weekend at Arthur's. He'd never admit it to his friend, but Arthur's dad scared him a bit. He always gave Merlin that same appraising look when he saw him; as though he was weighing him up and finding him severely wanting.

He also clearly disapproved of Arthur and Merlin sharing the same bed after Merlin had come out. He never did more than sigh when he came down to breakfast in the morning and saw Merlin there, but once Merlin had overheard him asking Arthur if he thought it was appropriate that "that boy" was always spending the night.

"His name is Merlin," Arthur had gritted out. "And I don't see what's inappropriate about my best friend sleeping over."

Some of Merlin's anger at Uther died away as he heard Arthur's response. It wasn't often his friend stood up to his dad, and Arthur going to bat for him was a pleasant surprise.

However, he was still mad enough to walk into the kitchen and greet Arthur with a casual "Morning, babe," – which gratifyingly sent Uther striding from the kitchen with a look of disgust on his face. Arthur's expression was a picture of astonishment before he met Merlin's eyes and they both burst out laughing.

The Pendragon House always seemed slightly austere and off-putting when Uther was there; but when he was gone it was like another world. With his father away, Arthur's personality seemed to expand to fill the space; warm and inviting. Merlin no longer felt like a visitor, but more a cherished guest as he and Arthur messily made tortillas in the kitchen or played X-Box in the living room or watched DVDs side by side in Arthur's bed. It was Arthur's house when Uther was away, and to Merlin it felt like a home away from home.

~III~

That weekend, the last one before school started again, they had decided to get rip roaringly drunk.

"It's sixth form now," Arthur said as he shoved a fourth (or was it fifth?) beer in Merlin's hand. "It's all A-Levels and uni choices and responsibility from here on out. We gotta have fun while we can."

"Since when have you cared about responsibility?" Merlin snorted.

"I'm responsible. I am responsibility itself. If I was a superhero, I'd be Captain Responsible…ness."

"You're drunk," Merlin sniggered, then slightly undermined his own superiority by falling off his lawn chair.

"I'm not drunk," Arthur said grandly. "I am a Pendragon and we do not get drunk, we merely get… merry."

"Drunk!" Merlin sang out, tugging on Arthur's leg until he overbalanced and fell on the garden path next to Merlin.

"Big mistake, Emrys," Arthur said, narrowing his eyes and without warning he pounced on Merlin and began tickling him mercilessly.

"Ah! No, not fair!" Merlin wheezed. He was ticklish practically everywhere and Arthur was almost completely resistant… except on his knees…

Merlin twisted slightly and latched on to Arthur's kneecap.

"No, no!" Arthur yelped. "Truce?"

"No way," Merlin said, pressing his advantage. Until Arthur flipped him over on his back.

"The tables have turned!" Arthur shouted in his best superhero voice, and Merlin squirmed just enough to knock his beer over onto Arthur's leg.

"And now the tables have turned, er, back!" Merlin yelled in triumph.

Arthur leapt up as he felt the beer on his jeans. He looked down at Merlin, his eyes glinting.

"You've really done it now, Emrys. It's the pond for you."

"Arthur, no!" Merlin pointed a warning finger in the air. "Don't even think about it."

Arthur smirked, like a lion at his prey. Merlin attempted to roll away but Arthur grabbed him and hoisted him in the air and began carrying him across the garden.

"Don't you dare Arthur, don't you dare- mfmph!" Merlin's protests were rudely cut off as Arthur unceremoniously dropped him in the large ornamental pond.

He emerged coughing and spluttering, strips of pond weed sticking to his hair. Arthur was nearly crying with laughter.

"Fine, you win." Merlin said, defeatedly. "Help me out."

He stuck his hand out. As Arthur grabbed it, Merlin grinned and pulled hard. There was a tremendously satisfying noise as Arthur crashed into the water beside him.

"Cannot believe you fell for that!" Merlin crowed as Arthur stood up, a bulrush lodged firmly behind his ear.

His victory celebrations were short lived when Arthur pulled him back down under.

~III~

Ten minutes later, they went back in the house, dripping all over the kitchen tiles. Arthur sent Merlin to shower while he made hot chocolate on the stove, then went for one himself when Merlin returned, leaving strict instructions about how to stir it.

"I think I can make hot chocolate," Merlin said.

"This isn't bloody Options Merlin, it's all the way from Italy. _Ciccolata Calda,"_ Arthur said with such a ludicrously exaggerated Italian accent that Merlin collapsed into laughter again.

"Alright Gino D'Acampo, chill out," he said and Arthur flicked him the Vs as he left.

Merlin stopped laughing when Arthur returned wearing only a towel wrapped round his waist. He was suddenly very interested in ladling out the hot chocolate as Arthur reclined in his chair, running his hands through his wet hair.

Fighting the urge to go over there and see what that hair felt like for himself, Merlin brought the mugs to the table. He wrapped his hands tightly around his, the warmth a welcome distraction.

"Suits you that," Arthur said, nodding towards Merlin's shirt. He'd just grabbed one out of Arthur's tops from his drawer, not really registering that it was a football shirt. "Maybe this is the year you finally join the team."

"Yeah or I could repeatedly punch myself in the face, that sounds fun too."

Arthur laughed.

"You should try it! You're fast enough, I've seen you run. Bit on the scrawny side obviously, but we'd soon toughen you up."

"Gee, I can't wait. Although I really am quite busy with that whole punching myself in the face thing, you know."

Arthur shook his head.

"Such a nerd, Merlin."

"Nerds are in now, didn't you hear? Geek chic and all that," Merlin said distractedly. It was getting increasingly hard to concentrate with Arthur sat there shirtless, moisture still gleaming on his torso, his nipples all pink and Jesus…

Merlin took a gulp of hot chocolate to try and snap out of it and promptly choked.

Arthur came over to bang him on the back, which was helpful, but then he stayed in Merlin's general proximity, all half-naked and clean smelling, which definitely wasn't helpful.

"You're a delicate flower, aren't you Merls?" Arthur grinned.

"Shut up. Anyway, I thought we were trying not to catch cold," Merlin said, gesturing to Arthur's bare chest.

Good God, his stomach was nice. All sort of lean and muscly and tanned, like if you touched it, it'd be all smooth and-

"Suppose you're right," Arthur said languidly, stretching as he walked towards the door. "Be right back."

Merlin breathed a sigh of relief that Arthur hadn't seemed to notice his eyes had practically glazed over with lust. Then he had a small moment of bereavement that Arthur's lovely torso was soon to be covered by a shirt.

"Moment of silence for Arthur's naked chest," Merlin whispered to his cocoa and then snorted with laughter.

Okay, perhaps he was still quite drunk.

But when Arthur walked back into the room, his expression had changed. He looked pensive, even slightly sad.

"What's wrong?" Merlin asked instantly.

"No, nothing, I just… weird seeing Morgana's room empty. Haven't got used to it yet."

Merlin nodded. They didn't talk about Morgana much, although Merlin had been round the house enough in recent years to know that Morgana seemed to bring tension with her wherever she went. He had woken up in Arthur's bed more than one time in the early hours by furious whispers, and surmised that it was Morgana stumbling in late and drunk to meet Uther's cold disapproval. He could usually feel Arthur awake beside him, tense and rigid, but he never said anything about it so Merlin had never brought it up. He was an only child and never really knew how sibling relationships were supposed to be. Gwen and Elyan seemed to get on well, but perhaps that's because they were both so good natured. Gwaine had a little sister he mercilessly teased, but woe betide anyone else who tried to cross her. Those relationships just seemed a lot more easy and natural than Arthur and Morgana's. From what Merlin could pick up, Morgana had gone off the rails a bit and was driving Uther crazy. Arthur just seemed to want to stay out of it.

But he had known Arthur would be sad to see Morgana go off to Brighton, especially because he suspected Arthur could use a buffer at home between him and his father. Merlin certainly wouldn't like to have all of Uther's attention suddenly focussed on him.

He looked at Arthur's downcast face.

"Remember the first time you invited me round here? But you didn't tell Morgana I was coming and she caught me in your room and put me in a headlock 'cause she thought I was a burglar?"

Arthur laughed.

"Oh I'm glad you found it funny, I was bloody terrified!" Merlin said indignantly, but he was smiling.

"That's nothing; when I was six I was playing cops and robbers, and tied her Barbies up outside in the mud to be hostages. When she saw I got dirt in Sindy's hair she chased me round with a rolling pin. I had to hide up a tree until Uther got home."

Arthur looked much less meditative, so Merlin kept the conversation going. To his surprise, they spent the next two hours just talking about Morgana. Arthur suddenly seemed to have a lot he wanted to say, and Merlin felt inexplicably honoured to be learning so much about his friend.

Then at one point he was watching the way Arthur's eyes danced when he laughed, and he realised he was in trouble. Because lusting after Arthur's body was one thing, but sitting here listening to Arthur talk, he felt such rush of feelings; sort of tenderness and protectiveness and softness all mixed together. It overwhelmed him.

He loved Arthur. And it may have only been sixteen year old, hormonal, pining, unrequited love but it was love nonetheless.

And he was in trouble.

~III~

It wasn't until they were lying in bed that Arthur told him. Merlin had been close to drifting off, pleasantly warm and full of hot chocolate and an indefinable satisfied feeling that he was right where he should be.

"I'm gonna miss Morgana," Arthur said suddenly.

"Even though you'll be safe from the rolling pin?" Merlin teased.

But Arthur didn't smile back.

"I wasn't… I never... I wasn't much of a brother to her," Arthur said in a rush.

"Eh? What?" Merlin propped himself up on his elbows, aware that this conversation had taken a turn somehow.

Arthur opened his mouth to speak and then abruptly closed it again. "Never mind," he said.

"Arthur, what is it?" Merlin said gently, because his friend suddenly seemed on the verge of tears.

"Something happened once," Arthur said and his voice sounded very small. "I let her down."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Merlin said anxiously.

"No. I mean… I don't know." Arthur looked truly miserable, and it made Merlin's heart ache.

"You don't have to tell me anything. But, if you want to…"

Arthur turned away, leaving Merlin to look at his back. Merlin assumed it was his way of ending the conversation, and he was trying to decide whether to press Arthur or just let it go. Then his friend spoke.

In a quiet voice, he told him what everything that had happened. And Merlin felt sick down to his very core, sick and furious that someone would do this; that these actions could echo down the years the way they had.

Arthur sounded calm when he told the story, but Merlin could feel the pain radiating from him; the hurt and anger of a helpless twelve year old.

"I wish I had…" Arthur began and then stopped, sighing.

"You did everything you could," Merlin said. "You did the right thing."

"I- I hesitated," Arthur said and Merlin could hear the self-hate in his voice.

"Yes," Merlin said strongly. "And then you did the right thing."

"Sometimes I think everything changed that night," Arthur said and his voice sounded very far away.

Merlin didn't say anything to that because Arthur was right; and spouting some cliché at him about time being a great healer would be no help at all. Instead he said:  
"Thank you for telling me."

"Yeah." Arthur laughed faintly. "Guess you owe me a secret now."

"I watched Titanic last week and cried three times," Merlin said promptly and thank God, Arthur laughed.

"I think you should have taken that to your grave, mate."

"Leo and Kate forever," Merlin said.

Arthur chuckled again. Looking at his friend's back, Merlin felt the same wave of feeling that had swept over him in the kitchen, only ten times more intense now that Arthur seemed so vulnerable and sad. All he wanted was to be close to Arthur, to try and console him in any way he could. Before he had time to consider whether it was a good idea, he inched forward across the bed, sliding into place against Arthur's back and putting his arm over his friend's chest.

There was a short silence, in which Merlin temporarily forgot how to breathe.

"Merlin?" Arthur sounded bemused. "Are you spooning me?"

"Yes. No. Shut up. It's supposed to be comforting."

Merlin was pretty sure Arthur could feel his heart frantically beating in his chest, so closely pressed together were they, but he decided he didn't care. If Arthur wanted to chuck him out of the bed or scream at him for overstepping the boundaries, he'd accept it. What he wouldn't accept was the regret that he'd chickened out of holding his best friend when Arthur needed it most.

"Odd." Arthur said after a while.

"What?"

"I'm usually the big spoon."

Merlin grinned.

"Go to sleep, idiot."

Then, a little later, just as they were dropping off.

"You're a good person Arthur."

Arthur didn't respond but he seemed to settle back into Merlin's embrace, and that was more than enough.

~III~

It suddenly all makes sense now; the way Arthur reacted, his anger at Gilli, his fear for Merlin.

"Arthur, I swear, it was nothing like that-"

"I know, I know, I really do… it's just I saw the drugs and then I thought you might not be in your right mind and I panicked and-"

"Shh, okay. I understand. I'm sorry I shouted so much."

Merlin is hit with a wave of remorse about screaming at Arthur. He attempts a smile.

"You always said coke makes people act like dickheads."

Arthur gives him a wan little smile in return. Then Merlin realises Arthur's looking at his chest, and he leans behind him to grab his t-shirt, pulling it on as quickly as possible.

"I don't understand why," Arthur says, slowly, like speaking is difficult. The tear tracks are still visible on his face and he looks much younger than eighteen.

"I don't understand why you won't… eat."

"I do eat," Merlin says automatically but there's no real conviction behind it. A sharp pain is beginning to throb in his temples and he's still exhausted from the altercation with Arthur.

"I've been looking up… I mean… I did some research."

"Research?" Merlin says tiredly, leaning back on his heels.

"On, you know, eating problems." Arthur is very studiously looking away. "And… anorexia."

Merlin flinches. That word. He hates it. Makes him feel sick and scared. Even the sound of it. It sounds like what it is; something wrenched and gaunt, something hideous.

"I'm not anorexic," he says and he can say it with conviction because it's true, skipping a few meals does not an eating disorder make. He's tired and he's stressed and he's unhappy, he'll admit to all that, but the eating thing is just a habit he's got into. He can drop it when he wants.

He announces all this to Arthur, but Arthur just frowns at him, disbelief etched across his face.

"I'm serious, Arthur," he says.

"Prove it, then." Arthur says softly. "Eat with me the next few days. Eat what I eat."

Merlin opens his mouth to object, because he's not a child and Arthur can't tell him what to do, but then he rethinks. Why not? It'll get Arthur off his back, prove to him once and for all that he doesn't have an eating problem. He's happy to eat.

"Fine," Merlin says. "But no big greasy chicken wings, or any of that kebab crap from the street van. My body is a temple." He wiggles his eyes at Arthur, but Arthur still looks so damn serious.

"You mean it? You promise."

Merlin rolls his eyes.

"You want me to bloody pinky swear? Yes, I promise. It's no big deal."

Arthur smiles tentatively at him.

"Okay then."

He suddenly lets out a breath, wiping his cheeks as though he's only just realised he's been crying.

"Uh… that was…"

"Intense," Merlin says. "I feel like we just acted out an episode of Eastenders."

"Sorry I went a bit crazy."

"Yeah, same here." Merlin winces slightly when he notices a slight bruise on Arthur's jaw. "Um, sorry about hitting you."

"S'ok. You pack a surprisingly powerful punch, Merls." Arthur grins.

The use of the old nickname gives Merlin a slight warm feeling in his stomach, and he smiles back.

Arthur looks at the mantelpiece clock and Merlin thinks he probably realised he needs to get back to Mithian at the party.

"It's pretty late," Arthur says and Merlin nods, ready to bid him goodbye.

"Any chance I can crash here?"

Wrong-footed, Merlin blinks a couple of times and Arthur frowns.

"I mean, or I can go, it's whatever-"

"No, stay," Merlin says quickly. "If you don't need to get back to Mithian or…"

"I think she can do without me for one night." Arthur looks hesitant. "So I'll take the sofa?"

"Don't be stupid, Mum'll wake you up when she gets in. Besides, my bed's missed you."

There's a beat in which Merlin realises what he's just said and blushes crimson. Arthur snorts.

"Seriously Merlin, be gayer."

"Yeah, that's what I trying to do a couple of hours ago, if you hadn't noticed."

Arthur looks serious for a second at the mention of previous events, then he says, completely straight-faced, "You think Gilli's still waiting in that shed for you?"

There's a second's silence, then they both burst out laughing.

"You bastard," Merlin wheezes out.

"You love it," Arthur says and he gets to his feet, tugging Merlin up after him.

Merlin estimates Arthur hasn't slept in his bed for at least six or seven months and they're both bigger now and the little three quarter mattress is nowhere near as spacious as Arthur's king size. But something feels essentially right as they lie down next to each other, Arthur complaining about Merlin's sharp elbows and Merlin bemoaning Arthur's cold feet.

Arthur falls asleep first and Merlin lies on his back and listens to him breathe. Maybe it's not all so bad after all. Maybe he can go back to normal, feel the way he did before.

Maybe he can eat with Arthur and not feel bad about it.

There's too many maybes but Merlin decides he doesn't mind, not right at that moment, not with Arthur warm in bed beside him.


	7. That Heavy Love

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Angst, angst, angst

~III~

"**Half a scrape-of-marmite sandwich,****  
****last night's pushed-aside**

**potatoes, greying like a tramp's teeth,****  
****crusts, crumbs are a danger to him,**

**so much orbiting space junk****  
****that's weightless for only so long.**

**Burn it up on re-entry, burn it,****  
****burn it. So he trains**

**with weights, he jogs, he runs****  
****as if the sky were falling."**

He has a moment of panic when he wakes the next morning and the events of the previous night come flooding back to him. But before he has time to overthink it, Arthur stirs beside him.

"You need a bigger bed," he says lazily, not bothering to open his eyes, and Merlin relaxes slightly.

"Oh sorry Richie Rich, I'll sleep on the floor next time."

"Mmm, see that you do."

Arthur yawns and stretches; muscles taut beneath the t-shirt he had worn to bed. Merlin averts his eyes quickly, now is definitely not the time to be noticing Arthur's body with literally only inches of space between them. Arthur may be generally oblivious but even he might notice if Merlin gets… excited.

Merlin rolls onto his back and thinks hard about the time Gwaine wasn't paying attention on the sewing machine in Textiles and the needle went right through his finger. Merlin doesn't consider himself overly squeamish, but the memory of that is sufficiently disgusting to chase any arousal away.

He lets out a slight sigh.

"What you huffing about?" Arthur says, voice still thick with sleep.

"I dunno," Merlin says. And then: "I hate Sundays. It's just like a blergh of waiting around and homework and shit TV and then you know you have to go back to school tomorrow."

"Well aren't you a ray of sunshine in the mornings?"

"I do apologise, I didn't sleep that well because someone stole all the blankets for himself in the night."

Arthur sits up at that.

"You're criticising me? The human earthworm is criticising me? All you did all night was wriggle around like you were being used for bait."

"Lies, lies," Merlin says happily, snuggling further into the bed. He suddenly feels all warm and cosy and-

"Get up," Arthur says, pulling the duvet off the bed without ceremony.

"Arthur!" Merlin whines, curling in on himself. "It's cold!"

"Then you best get dressed. We're going out."

"What? It's like six am!"

"It's half-ten Merlin, you lazy sod. And we're going to the pastry shop to get your mum breakfast."

"Oh I see," Merlin grumbles, getting slowly to his feet. "Should have known you were trying to suck up to mum."

"I am a gentleman," Arthur announces imperiously. "Which is what Hunith deserves, rather than an idle ingrate like you as a son."

"I'm a brilliant son!" Merlin says indignantly. "You're just trying to supplant me. How would you like it if I came round to your house and brought your dad breakfast in bed?"

There's a brief pause in which Merlin actually imagines bringing Uther breakfast in bed and he nearly chokes. Arthur is grinning widely.

"If you don't mind picking cornflakes out of your hair, go right ahead."

Merlin continues to moan but he's somewhat mollified by the time they reach the shop and Arthur pays for a whole selection of treats.

Hunith, predictably, is thrilled to see him.

"Arthur! Come here, sweetheart."

She envelopes him in a big hug.

"You get more and more handsome every time I see you."

"Mum," Merlin complains and Hunith rolls her eyes at him.

"Don't be jealous Merlin, you're still my gorgeous baby."

"Mum!" Merlin protests again and Arthur sniggers.

"We brought you some pastries," he says and lays them out on the table.

Hunith looks like she's about to explode with happiness and Merlin hurries off to the kitchen to make the tea before she cries or something.

While he's finding a tray for the mugs and pot he has a sudden flicker of fear that Arthur might be using this time to say… something… about Merlin to his mum, but when he returns, Hunith is simply shoving old photographs at Arthur.

"I found these the other day when I was clearing up," she says. "They're from your fifteenth birthday, love."

"Oh God," Merlin says but he knows very little stops Hunith when she's on a roll so he simply sits down next to Arthur and takes a look.

It hadn't been a big party, just the six of them round at Merlin's house for tea, as well as his old friend Will from Ealdor.

"Ah-ha, look at Gwen!" Merlin says. He had no memory of the pair of yellow dungarees she was wearing, but he'd definitely be bringing that into school the next day to remind her.

"Look at Lance's hair, more like," Arthur says. "He's got curtains!"

Merlin came across one of Gwaine wearing a party hat and pulling a face.

"Mum, did you know Gwaine tried to sneak in beer to that party but he lost it on the way?"

"Darling, your friend Gwaine is many things but subtle is not one of them. I heard them clanking around in his bag when he arrived so I hid them in the pantry." Hunith's eyes filled with amusement. "He looked so confused when he found them gone, the poor lamb."

As they chat and swap memories over the photos, Merlin is surprised to find himself absent-mindedly tucking into the pastries. He isn't really thinking about it until he catches Arthur looking at him with what can only be described as hope in his eyes. The thought both warms and scares Merlin a little. He breaks one of the pain aux raisins in two and pushes a half over to Arthur, shoving the other half in his mouth. Arthur smiles and Merlin smiles back.

~III~

But the next few days are not so easy. That Sunday, with Arthur there, it had been no challenge. Arthur stayed the whole day and eating with him seemed, if not quite natural, somehow okay.

But Monday he wakes up late and genuinely doesn't have time to get breakfast. He grabs a banana on the way out, mindful of his promise to Arthur, but by the time he gets to school it's all battered and brown in his bag and he throws it away.

But he's on for lunch, and Arthur joins him in the queue. They don't say anything about their arrangement but when Arthur picks the baked potato, orange juice, and an apple Merlin knows he's remembered – because Arthur normally devours about two burgers, three sides of chips, and whatever sticky pudding the canteen's doling out that day.

He's trying to make it easy for Merlin and Merlin feels touched. He orders the same and they take their seats alongside their friends; where talk is firmly fixated on the party.

"I'll never live it down," Gwaine is saying, head buried in his hands.

"Probably not," Lance agrees.

"What can't you live down?" Arthur says.

"Vivian made a pass at him on Saturday," Gwen says gleefully.

"The Black Widow went for you?" Arthur says, already laughing.

"Cornered me in Mith's bedroom and started with all this shit about how 'she'd had all the guys worth having and it was about time she made her way round to me,'" Gwaine explains.

"Mental," Merlin says.

"Mental is right. And talk about Black Widow, Jesus. It really was like she had eight arms the way she was groping me."

"I hope you escaped with your honour intact," Arthur drawls, draining half his orange juice in one gulp.

"Mate, I was out of there before she could coordinate those fake talon nails into undoing my zip." Gwaine shudders dramatically. "I might be up for it but I'm not that up for it."

"Well don't worry, Gwaine," Freya says sweetly. "She was wrapped around Gavin not half an hour later telling him she thought you were gay."

The table explodes with laughter as Gwaine groans.

"Oh yeah, laugh it up. At least I rated enough to be on her list of guys worth having."

"Yeah, I'm pretty heartbroken about that," Arthur says straight faced. "Aren't you, Lance?"

"Devastated," Lance says, sighing. "I'll never know whether she really is hiding a forked tail under those ridiculously tight jeans."

"Merlin, help me out here, as the one man at this table not in danger from Vivian's wicked wiles," Gwaine pleads.

"Um, actually…" Merlin says, blushing.

"What?!" Gwen instantly screeches.

Merlin can't believe he's about to tell this story.

"Well a couple of months after she outed me, she sort of dragged me into the bathroom at Cedric's party to apologise. And then she started rambling about how I could be sure if I was gay, and maybe I hadn't met the right girl, and then she kind of… threw herself at me."

Merlin winces to remember her sickly sweet alcohol breath as she inched in closer to his lips. He'd vowed never to tell his friends because he knew how they'd react, with the same hysterical laughter he's getting now.

"What did you do?" Freya chokes out between fits of giggles.

"I was bloody horrified! I kept trying to run away but she was going on and on, then eventually she was sick in the bath and I got the hell out of there."

His friends showed no sign of letting up on their obvious mirth, the bastards.

"I feel your pain, mate." Gwaine says, clapping him on the back. "It's the heavy burden us good looking blokes have to endure. Arthur and Lance will just never understand what it's like to have such sexual magnetism."

Last week Merlin might have tensed at such a joke, certain that Gwaine was making fun of the way he looked, but he catches sight of Arthur's open mouthed smile and relaxes.

"It's a gift and a curse," he shrugs and Arthur flicks water at him.

When he looks down at his plate, he realises that most of his baked potato is gone. And it feels okay.

~III~

But Tuesday is slightly more difficult. Arthur swings by his house with coffee and bagels, almost as though he knew Merlin would be too late to co-ordinate breakfast again. Merlin's glad, because it means he gets a lift in Arthur's car, and even if he doesn't feel that hungry, he gets the bagel down okay.

But he feels uncomfortably full all the way through the morning, and when he realises Arthur won't be around for lunch because he has football practice, he makes his excuses and slips away to the library to catch up on his coursework.

It's not cheating, not really, because he does still feel full and surely Arthur doesn't expect him to eat when he feels full? Also, Arthur's not technically eating right now either (although he knows Arthur will grab a sandwich after practice) so he's sticking to his side of the bargain.

Arthur doesn't come by the next morning but Merlin is actually up in time to eat this morning. He butters some toast rather unenthusiastically and only manages one slice in the end. But he tells himself it's because his stomach has become used to less food recently and if he eats too much too soon he'll get sick. And Arthur doesn't want that either, so this is justified.

He has lunch with Arthur and the others anyway, and it's mostly fine, but when he gets home that night to the empty flat, he can't quite bring himself to cook dinner. He munches on a couple of carrots as he watches telly, and has a vague idea about making some noodles or something, but he ends up falling asleep on the coach. When he wakes, its past midnight, and he stumbles to bed in a daze.

Merlin does feel slightly guilty about all of this, but he reasons that he's just fine tuning Arthur's system. They need an arrangement to suit both of them and he's just making sure it does. Arthur certainly seems pleased with him anyway, he makes sure he's always around for lunch whenever Arthur's there and Arthur reciprocates the gesture by choosing light meals for the two of them. So he doesn't feel too guilty, because he's eating much more than he was, and Arthur's happy, so where's the harm?

The first real crisis comes two weeks after Mithian's party. Arthur suggests they all go out for dinner at Pizza Express on Friday night. Merlin accepts along with everyone else but he's already tense about it because Arthur came by with breakfast again this morning and sat with him at lunch, so Merlin already feels overstuffed with those two meals. But he can hardly refuse, can he?

"Obviously you don't have to get the same toppings at me, or whatever," Arthur mutters to him as they stand in the queue. "But you'll get a pizza, right?"

He looks slightly anxious, though he's trying to hide it. Merlin nods reassuringly but inside he feels panicked. He's eaten too much today to handle a whole pizza, he's sure his stomach won't take it. And there's literally no way to hide from anyone here.

He achieves a bit of trickery anyway, scraping off bits of cheese and hiding them in his napkin when no-ones looking. He even manages to drop a whole slice discreetly on the floor under his chair when Arthur's in the bathroom. But he still ends up having to eat a good two thirds of his Margherita and he feels ill as he wipes the grease off his fingers. He's zoned out of the conversation a bit but everyone's having a good enough time not to notice; even Arthur's distracted.

It's just too much, he can feel it expanding inside his stomach, filling him horribly. He feels bloated and sick, and afraid for some reason he can't pinpoint. It feels like there's a stone at the bottom of his stomach, all that oil and fat just sitting there, poisoning his insides. He can't bear it.

He gets up and goes to the bathroom, careful not to hurry and attract attention. He doesn't want to do this but he doesn't see any other way; he honestly feels like he's going to be sick any minute anyway so it's not such a bad idea to help things along a little…

He has a moment of doubt, kneeling on the cold bathroom floor, aware that this is a violation of the agreement that even he can't reason his way out of. But if Arthur cares about him, then Arthur won't want him to suffer, will he? Because this is suffering, this terrible weight inside him, the shaky fear that's working through his body. Just this once he needs to go back on his word, just this once…

It doesn't take more than a couple of tries with his fingers down his throat before he's heaving and then it all comes up and Merlin lets it, tears forming in his eyes from the strain of retching. He spits and then wipes his mouth with a piece of tissue before flushing it all away, leaning back against the wall for a second, his hands shaking.

It's horrible and he hates it but he can't regret it because it's like pushing the reset button and now he doesn't have to feel so full and panicky.

He breathes in and out a few times before getting to his feet and unlocking the door.

Only to find Arthur outside it, fists hanging loosely at his sides, glittering blue eyes locked on Merlin's own.


	8. Your Mother and Mine

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: More angst and discussion of eating disorders

A/N: Thank you guys so much for the reviews and follows! I massively appreciate it :)

~III~

"**Curled like a lip, a crust dries in the bin,****  
****the supermodel's come-on-don't-touch sneer****  
****for the camera – desire****  
****caught, teased, time and again **

**until all the wants run dry**  
**and there's only this rictus,****  
****a cat raking claws****  
****down the arm of the chair"**

"You promised," Arthur says and though he doesn't repeat it, he can hear it echoing round his head like a mantra gone wrong: _you promised you promised you promised._

Merlin is pale and his fingers are shaking – either due to the shock of being caught, or the after effects of vomiting, Arthur doesn't know. They stand like that for a few seconds, facing one another, a dripping tap beating out a rhythm behind them.

Arthur had wanted so badly to be wrong. Had forced himself to quell his suspicions. Had tried to keep from staring at Merlin all evening, had tried to sit still when he saw him leave the table. Had told himself he was being paranoid, ridiculous; because he'd been watching Merlin for the last two weeks and he'd been normal, happy – he'd been eating.

"I got sick." Merlin says, although he doesn't put much effort into the lie, beyond fixing pleading eyes on Arthur for understanding.

How easy it would be to believe him. To nod his head and clap Merlin on the shoulder and slip back into the easy camaraderie of the last fortnight. But the illusion's shattered now and all Arthur can see is the sad magician behind the curtain, with his drawn face and absolutely nothing up his sleeves.

"You made yourself sick," Arthur says without malice and his mind is always racing to figure out what he should do next, how he can avoid ending up back at square one with his friend…

"I could feel it coming up anyway," Merlin says helplessly. "I was just trying to speed things up."

Arthur doesn't answer.

"This doesn't change anything," Merlin says. "I've been sticking to it otherwise. It's just one meal."

Arthur still can't find anything to say, his mind is whirling round at a dizzying pace and it's making him sick, he can't think properly.

Merlin looks frustrated with Arthur's silence.

"You're not gonna guilt trip me about one bloody pizza, are you?"

Arthur lifts one shoulder, almost unconsciously, but to Merlin it must look like some kind of dismissive shrug because he's suddenly incensed.

"Why are you up here checking up on me anyway? Why is it any of your business? You have no idea what you're talking about!"

Arthur suddenly knows exactly what to say, but that doesn't make it any easier to say it.

"I know. That's why I'm telling Hunith."

The defiant expression on Merlin's face vanishes instantly, panic distorting his features.

"You can't," he says in a low, pleading voice.

"I don't think we have a choice anymore," Arthur says very carefully.

"Arthur, come on." Merlin tries to smile. "Alright, I was an idiot, I admit it, it was a really stupid thing to do but I promise I won't do it again."

Arthur doesn't remind him that he promised before because that would be cruel and the last thing he wants now is to be cruel to Merlin. He's not angry that Merlin lied, he's terrified. He knows his friend will see him telling Hunith as some kind of attack on him, some kind of punishment, but it's the opposite. Arthur has to help Merlin and it's become glaringly apparent that he can't do it on his own.

"We can tell her together," he says at last.

"Arthur, we don't need to go. I said, it was a dumb mistake. It won't happen again. Come one, everyone gets one mistake right? Don't be mad."

Merlin's tone is wheedling, would-be-casual, but his eyes are desperate and he's twisting his hands together.

"I'm not mad Merlin. It's not… I'm not trying to tell you off, I'm… You have a problem and we need to get you some help."

Merlin is shaking his head.

"We've been through this, I don't have a problem! I wouldn't have been sick if you hadn't made me eat so much! I've got a small appetite, it's just my metabolism, it's natural, I'm not-"

Merlin cuts off as the door swings open and a man enters. He looks curiously over at the two of them and Arthur is struck by the odd sight they make; two young men conducting their own private standoff in a restaurant bathroom.

The man clearly picks up on the vibe in the room because he relieves himself quickly, exiting the bathroom with soap still on his hands rather than use the hand drier located next to Merlin and Arthur.

The brief pause seems to have given Merlin time to regroup, because his voice is calmer when he speaks again.

"Look Arthur, I haven't mentioned this but Mum's not exactly having a great time at work at the moment. She hates the night-shift and the new manager's a pain in the arse and she always seems to be on call… I'm just saying, I really don't want to upset her right now."

"She needs to know-"

"Look, I'll make you a deal. Two more weeks, okay? I'll eat with you again. But this time I won't mess it up, I swear. If I do, then you can tell Mum, okay? Just two more weeks."

Merlin looks so hopeful and it breaks Arthur's heart to shake his head.

"You can't – we can't do this on our own. You need some proper support."

Merlin's face twists in dismay.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks and he sounds wounded.

"Because I'm scared for you," Arthur says simply. He doesn't add that he's completely out of his depth and he should have realised that sooner; but he'd hoped it would be easier, hoped that he could intervene and Merlin could be saved.

Merlin sets his mouth in a grim line.

"You're not telling her," he says.

"I won't tell her if you will," Arthur says quietly.

"No-one's telling her." Merlin's voice is low. "I mean it, Arthur. You tell her and I'll never speak to you again."

That one takes Arthur's breath a bit, but it isn't even a choice, not really, because he'd rather have Merlin alive and hating him than…

Arthur's research into eating disorders hadn't been easy. He read about the psychology of anorexia, about behaviour patterns and external triggers and obsessive routines. He read page after page of first person accounts about secret keeping, midnight exercise jags, extra pockets for hiding food – a whole mind boggling array of tricks to facilitate the illusion of normality.

But the bits that stuck with him the most, the paragraphs and images he can't get out his head, are the long term effects. He is tormented by pictures of stick limbed girls with sunken chests and hollow eyes, squinting at the camera. Of emaciated boys in hospital beds, stalky arms resting on white sheets, head tipped back against the pillow like a body laid out at a wake. Some of the pictures tell a story of redemption, it's true; people who've gone from five stone to nine, people who realised they would never leave that hospital bed again unless they conceded they were ill and asked for help. But more often it seems to go the other way. This is my sister, who died of heart failure weighing just fifty eight pounds. This is my boyfriend, who overdosed after a seven year battle with anorexia.

This is my friend, who died because I could not save him.

"I have to tell her," Arthur says and Merlin's mouth works furiously for a moment, staring at Arthur.

Then he's gone, pushing out the door of the bathroom before Arthur has time to say another word.

~III~

Arthur doesn't know whether Merlin's gone straight home to try and head him off at the pass, or whether he's just run away somewhere but he supposes it doesn't matter. He has to go straight to Hunith's anyway, right now, before he loses his nerve. He ignores the sick, heavy weight in his stomach as he drives; tries not to listen to Merlin's words echoing in his head.

_(i'll never speak to you again)_

Well. So be it.

Hunith's sat on the sofa watching television when Arthur arrives, he can see her through the window. He feels a pang for interrupting what is probably her only night off this week. He spent the whole car journey thinking about Merlin; he only now has a chance to spare a thought for Hunith. He's about to deliver a genuinely devastating piece of news to Merlin's mother, with no warning. How will she react? Will she be angry with him? Will she even believe him?

It's too late for all that now so he steels himself and knocks on the door. Hunith's face blooms into a smile when she sees him.

"Arthur! Lovely to see you, dear."

Then she peers behind him, looking slightly confused.

"Is Merlin with you?"

_So he's not come home then._

"No," Arthur says. "He's… still out."

"Oh, okay… would you like to come in and wait for him?"

"I actually wanted to talk to you. About Merlin."

The same look of confusion crosses Hunith's face, then it's replaced by something he can't quite place. But it's not the worry he might have expected. She nods, and ushers him in.

"Tea?" she says and Arthur agrees, because tea's good for shock and he fears that's what he's about to give her. A part of him also wants to delay the inevitable, sit on the slightly threadbare sofa and breathe in that comforting smell that Merlin's flat has – homely in some indefinable way that his own mansion of a house never is.

Hunith re-enters, handing him a mug of tea and he takes a sip, preparing his opening line. But she speaks first.

"I think I know what this is about, Arthur."

Arthur feels a curious mix of both relief and anger. Relief that Hunith was aware of the problem, and then a flash of anger that she didn't seem to have done anything about it. She was a nurse, how bad was she going to let it get before intervening?

But something doesn't quite fit. Hunith looks weirdly nervous, almost as though she's weighing Arthur up and trying to predict his reaction. It just seems… out of place, somehow.

"Right… okay… so you've noticed…"

He trails off but Hunith seems to pick up his meaning.

"It's not exactly hard to spot." Hunith says, and she gives Arthur a sad smile. "Merlin's never been the most subtle of creatures."

Arthur half-nods, still disoriented.

"I'm surprised you didn't see it sooner, to be honest," Hunith says with a bit of a sigh, and Arthur feels a sudden flush of guilt. However he had expected this conversation to go, he hadn't imagined that Hunith would bring up his lack of awareness.

"I've known for a while now," Hunith continues. "I suppose the signs were there for years though really."

Arthur is surprised by how calmly Hunith is talking. She doesn't seem overly worried at all; more wistful.

But then she turns to him and she suddenly looks terribly anxious.

"You won't hate him, will you Arthur? Or stop being his friend?"

"What? God no, of course not!" Arthur says, horrified.

"Because I don't think he could bear it."

"Hunith… I would never… All I want to do is support him. That's why I'm here."

Hunith gives him a wobbly smile.

"I knew you wouldn't abandon him Arthur. You're such a good boy."

She squeezes his hand.

"Have you… have you talked to him about it?" Arthur says.

"I've tried, but he doesn't want to. Well, you're a teenage boy Arthur, you know how it goes. He doesn't want to talk to his mum about that kind of thing."

Again, Arthur feels slightly surprised at Hunith's tone. She's talking as though Merlin has a mild XBox addiction or something, as opposed to a serious disorder. His voice is a little sharp when he speaks again.

"Don't you think you should insist? Because I think he's really in trouble here."

"In trouble?"

"Yeah, I mean, even I've talked to him about it. Or I've been trying. The last few weeks."

"You've talked to him about it?" Hunith raises her eyebrows in disbelief. "He knows that you know?"

"Well, yeah. Look, I've been trying to help him but I can't… I don't think I know how. He needs a proper support. Hunith, I think he needs medical help."

"Medical help?" It's Hunith's turn to sound bemused. "I'm aware it's not an ideal situation but I don't see how medical help is in any way relevant."

Arthur is in shock. He's known Hunith for seven years now and the two things he likes best about her is that she's full of empathy, and she loves Merlin more than anything in the world. But this total… under-reaction to what Arthur sees as a very serious problem is alarmingly out of character.

_Perhaps she's in denial._

Arthur can see no other tactic than to talk plainly and clearly. It seems to be the only way he can get through to Hunith when she's being like this.

"Hunith, I think Merlin has anorexia. And whether we want to face up to that or not, it is a very serious condition and I do believe he needs professional help."

The silence that follows Arthur's statement is somewhat deafening. As Hunith's shocked face turns to face his, he worries he's gone too far, but he had to say something to snap her out of that eerie calm…

"I- I don't understand." Hunith says eventually.

Arthur nods.

"I know. I didn't want to think it either but these last two weeks he promised me he'd try and eat more and I really thought it was working but at dinner tonight he made himself sick and I just think it's gone on too long and we need to get him help…"

It all rushes out his mouth in one long cascade and then he notices that Hunith has gone completely white and she's clutching her chest and suddenly he knows, without a doubt he _knows_ that they were at cross purposes this whole time, that she had no idea about Merlin until now.

"You didn't know," he says stupidly because he can't think of anything else.

"You think Merlin's anorexic?" she whispers, and there are already tears forming in her eyes.

"Hunith, I'm so sorry, I thought that's what we were talking about."

"No. No, I wasn't… Oh my God."

"He… I… He collapsed at school last month when you were away. And I noticed that he'd lost a lot of weight and he didn't have any energy, and there wasn't any food in the house. And I guess I realised I hadn't seen him eat much in a long time. But he wouldn't admit it. Then we… there an incident and we talked properly and he promised he would start eating properly. And that was two weeks ago but tonight at Pizza Express he just…"

Arthur trails off. He's not sure Hunith's even listening anyway. She's staring at nothing, arms wrapped around her middle like she's holding herself together.

There's another long silence and then she speaks.

"He told me he'd started running." Her voice is very quiet. "He came down for breakfast one day and his pajama bottoms were hanging off him. And I asked if he'd lost weight and he said he's starting running and it was changing the way he looked. And I… believed him."

"No-one else noticed either. He's good at hiding." Arthur says gently.

"I'm his mother," Hunith says and she looks absolutely heartbroken. "All these night shifts and doubles. And he was always in his room working, and I left him to it because it's his A-Levels and he's busy and I knew I'd have time to catch up with him once my rotation was finished. And now you tell me he's…"

Then she starts to cry.

Arthur freezes for a second. Because he's never admitted it, not to Merlin and barely even to himself, but he's always privately thought of Hunith as a kind of surrogate mother. He has no way of imagining what his own mother was like and Uther would never tell him; even the photos he has of her give little away. But when he became Merlin's friend and met Hunith, he started to entertain the private fantasy that his mother might have treated him the way Hunith does. She hugs him when she sees him, ruffles his hair and kisses him goodnight on the cheek, gives him advice about schoolwork and girls, and cooks his favourite meals when he comes round. When Merlin occasionally joked that Arthur was the son his mum never had, Arthur's heart always skipped a beat for a second, the secret hope flaring inside him that Hunith did look at him as a sort of second son.

And now she's crying and it's his fault because he told her so bluntly and ripped her world apart.

He is indecisive for only a few seconds more before he takes the risk and puts his arms around her, and when she grips him tightly back it feels for a second like a mother embracing her son.

But when she pulls back he remembers that it's Merlin who's really her son and it's Merlin who they need to talk about.

"I'm sorry I did this so badly," he says miserably, and Hunith shakes her head.

"I needed to know," she replies, her eyes bright.

And he braces himself for all the questions she's about to ask but then there's a noise at the door and suddenly Merlin is standing in the room.

And he pointedly doesn't look in Arthur's direction, as though Arthur isn't even there.


	9. Gravity Falling Down Again

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Discussion of depression and suicide

A/N: Thanks for reviewing and following! I'm afraid this chapter is a bit sad.

~III~

**"Saying no**  
**to the pull of the world.**  
**Straight out, he said it**  
**(burning but not yet**  
**consumed) he said 'Weight**  
**is bad. Bad.' On the blanket.**  
**In the desert of his bed."**

He means to go straight back home even though it's all pointless because Arthur's driving and there's no way he can beat him there. But he perseveres, right up until the point when he's standing outside his flat and somehow his feet carry on moving, leading him down the street and round the corner to the children's playground.

The playground is deserted, because it's past nine and all the children are in bed. The swings are creaking slightly in the breeze and he sits down on one absentmindedly.

Merlin used to come here when he was a little boy. Used to draw pictures in the sandpit with his fingers. Used to hide inside the big blue tunnel with mirrors on the inside and stare at his distorted reflection. Used to swing for as long as Hunith would push him, legs kicking out in the air, convinced that this would finally be the time he'd go so high that he'd fly off into the atmosphere.

Merlin feels earthbound now. Heavy. Weighted like he's chained down, in the grip of something stronger than himself.

He feels sad, and old.

He was happier than this, once, he's sure of it. He remembers being contented as a child, remembers things like birthday parties and trips to the zoo and reading books in the library and jumping in puddles in the rain. He used to be like other children and then something changed and now he can't seem to be normal. Can't seem to function day to day or say the right thing or hit the right notes.

Somewhere along the way, he has stopped believing that he'll get better. Stopped believing that he can be happy again; that he can go to university and get a job and have a normal relationship and grow old with someone by his side. He cannot have any of these things because there is something sick at the heart of him and he can't get better.

And now this, with Arthur.

Arthur claimed to be scared for him but it wasn't true. Arthur wanted rid of him. He'd been exposed to the truth, seen the messy wounded raw insides of Merlin and he couldn't handle it. So he was palming him off on Hunith and getting the hell out.

Merlin can't blame him. This was the difference between love and friendship, at the end of the day. Friends were people you laughed with, swapped jokes and stories with, played sports with, drank coffee with. Whereas people you loved… those were the people you could show yourself completely to and they would stand by you. Those were the people who cared enough to fit together your broken pieces and make sure you didn't shatter again. They were the ones who held onto you through thick and thin.

You couldn't expect all that from a friend. Arthur had tried to help, had done his very best, but he didn't love Merlin. He was scared by the darkness that Merlin had revealed and, without love to bind them together, he was running away.

Merlin had been angry before but he feels all that ebbing away now. He would let Arthur go, release him from the burden of trying to help Merlin. He would make good on his hot tempered threat to not speak to Arthur again – not out of hate but out of compassion. He will absolve Arthur fully from his duty of care; drive him away so he can be free of Merlin for good.

Merlin knows it will be painful but what other choice does he have? He loves Arthur enough to do this for him. And it's all pain, isn't it, anyway? He can't remember the last time he felt right within his skin, comfortable in his body. More strongly than ever he feels the urge to just disappear, fade into the air until there's nothing left. He doesn't want to be here anymore. It's too hard and he's so tired.

They don't talk about suicide in his house. Hunith's best friend from school had hung herself when Merlin was seven, after losing her new-born child to cot death. He was too young to understand what had happened; at the time he just wondered at the pinched set of his mother's face, at the constant bouts of crying at night. She told him that Marnie, the nice lady who used to bring him toy cars and pick 'n' mix, had died very suddenly and it was a big shock for mummy. He knew what dead was, sort of, but he still had a vague idea that Marnie would be coming around again sometime. It was only when he asked his mother when she'd be back that Hunith had smashed her hand hard down on the table and shouted "For God's sake, Merlin," that he realised something was really wrong. Then Hunith cried and apologised and the next two weeks he stayed with his Uncle Gauis. When he returned Hunith had stopped crying, and though her face was still tight and drawn, she was more like the mother she had been before.

Even now, suicide was rarely mentioned. It wasn't forbidden in any sense; Hunith had always been the type to encourage Merlin to talk to her about anything. He knows that if he brought it up, she'd tell him all he wanted to know. But he doesn't, because it would cause her pain and he never wants to take her back to that place. When he read Mrs Dalloway in school he never mentioned it to her and he tucked his second hand copy of Madame Bovary behind a stack of other books. It's stupid, he knows, but he doesn't want anything to set his mother off.

So how could he ever sit her down and say to her: "Mum, sometimes I feel like…"  
_I want to disappear._  
_I want to stop existing._  
_I want to go away forever._  
_I want to die._

So he pushes those thoughts deep down inside himself and never gives them free rein, because even thinking about it is a danger. He fears the moment he reasons it out is the moment he steps closer to accepting it as an idea. He has to pretend it's not an option, because he loves his mum more than anything in the whole world and he could never put her through that again.

But today. Today is different. He doesn't have the energy to push it down inside himself, pretend it doesn't exist.

Today he wants to kill himself.

It's not just because he can't eat. It's not just because he's in love with someone who doesn't love him back. It's not just because he's sad and desperate every day. It's not just because he feels alone.

It's because he's lost all hope that those things will ever change. The way he is today seems like the way he'll be forever. He can deal with those feelings in the here and now but what he can't deal with is the fact that they will never go away. He can't see a future without this thing inside his head, his guts, that torments him. It won't ever leave him alone and he can't bear it.

He is crying now, tears trickling down his face onto his neck as he rocks back and forth on the swing.

He's scared of death but he's more scared of this. Of feeling this way forever.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he jumps, nearly losing his balance. When he pulls it out, he sees a text from Gwen.

_'Are you ok? You ran off and we were all worried. Are you with Arthur? Call me when you can xxx'_

He can almost see Gwen typing the words, anxious frown on her face as she taps in the kisses. He is overwhelmed by such a rush of love for her that it's shocking, and the tears come even faster. He wants to call her and explain everything, to ask her for help and beg her to not let him fade away like this.

His friends. All of them. What would they say if he died? Would he leave them like Hunith after Marnie's death, sobbing and desolate? He's struck by a sudden image of Freya weeping, her pale face contorted with grief and he feels sickeningly guilty.

_(but if they really were your friends, they wouldn't want you to feel this way. they'd understand you had to go.)_

Merlin shakes his head. He's confused, it's getting cold outside, and he's exhausted. He needs to go home.

He needs to not think right now.

He walks slowly up the street and lets himself into the flat with a jangle of keys, so that he won't take Arthur and his mother by surprise.

They seem shocked anyway, turning to look at him in unison but Merlin makes sure his eyes only meet his mother's. She's obviously been crying and his heart sinks. All that time in the park and he never figured out what to say to her.

"Sit down, love," Hunith says gently and he moves forward automatically before he remembers what he has to do and he hardens his features.

"Not until _he_ goes," he says and his voice comes out flat and stony.

"Merlin!" Hunith says, shocked, but he keeps his face impassive. He can feel Arthur looking at him but he knows he cannot look back because if he meets Arthur's eyes right now he is sure to weaken.

There's a pause, and then Arthur gets to his feet.

"It's fine, Hunith, I was leaving anyway. You two need to talk."

As he heads for the door, Arthur stops next to Merlin. He's standing so close Merlin can feel the heat from his body.

"I'm sorry," Arthur whispers and Merlin nearly cracks right there and then because Arthur sounds so miserable.

But he loves Arthur too much to let him down now so he turns away as though he heard nothing, and then Arthur leaves.

"Don't be mad at him, love," Hunith says softly. "He only wants to help you."

"I don't need help," says Merlin automatically, though he knows his mother won't be as easily dissuaded as anyone else.

And she isn't. They talk for nearly three hours and though Merlin tries every trick under the sun, Hunith won't let him off the hook. She doesn't give in until Merlin makes a promise to follow a new diet plan under her supervision, and to see a counsellor or psychiatrist.

Merlin agrees, eventually, worn down by arguing. Privately, he is making plans. Hunith's job simply doesn't allow her to monitor him all the time. If he's clever, he can figure out ways to adapt the diet plan to suit his needs. As for the counsellor, surely he can play it smart? Drop a few breadcrumbs; talk about his dad a bit, the trauma of coming out etc. etc. Hopefully the shrink'll conclude that he's perfectly normal, just understandably stressed by the 'pressures of teenage life'. Besides, it's all confidential anyway, isn't it? Even if the shrink decides he's a raging nutbag, they can't tell Hunith or anyone else.

What all this will achieve, Merlin isn't exactly sure. He's pushed the thoughts about suicide deep back down inside himself, to be re-examined at a later date. Right now, he just wants to be left alone. If he can get through these last few months of school, scrape some good grades in his A-Levels then he'll be out of here. Off to uni, away from Arthur and Hunith, free to do what he wants. Even if he doesn't know what that is.

Planning helps focus his brain, make him feel less disconnected. He lies awake in bed thinking of strategies and tactics, a strange kind of nervy adrenaline running through his body.

But when he finally falls asleep, his dreams are full of Arthur and he wakes up crying.


	10. My Right Arm

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Language

A/N: High time I thanked you wonderful reviewers! Dee, Reality's Desire, EmmiLestrange, mersan123, grxce, lovePEOPLEandCOWBOY, you all freaking rock!

This particular offering could be subtitled 'The One Where Arthur Finally Gets A Clue'. I do hope you like it.

~III~

**"Ketones: a sour chemical smell on his skin**  
**like a darkroom with blackouts on windows**  
**with shallow trays of fluid silky-still**  
**as a swimming pool after lights-out,**  
**their monochromes hardening. Developed,**  
**they will close the family album."**

He doesn't expect Merlin to be at school on Monday but he is. Arthur sees him slip quietly into the back of Politics, the only class they have together. Arthur had saved him a seat but he isn't surprised to see Merlin walk straight past it, settling down on an empty desk on the far side of the room. It still hurts though; a tiny shock of pain – bearable in itself but carrying the heavy promise of similar injury. Like a pin prick before a lumbar puncture, Arthur is aware it will be the first of many to come if Merlin makes good on his promise to ignore him.

He tries to crane his neck to look at Merlin, to see if he looks any better or worse since Friday, but Mr Llewyn frowns at him and he tries to pull his mind back to centralised federalism. His texts to Merlin over the weekend had gone unanswered but Hunith had sent him a brief message on Sunday to say thank you and that she was looking after her son.

It's not enough for Arthur. He needs to know for himself and so he tries at the end of the class, even though he senses the futility.

"Hey. How's it going?"

Merlin continues to shove his books into his bag as though he hasn't heard.

"You didn't answer any of my texts," Arthur says and he doesn't care that a couple of classmates are lingering to listen. Let him sound like a clingy boyfriend, he's not bothered.

Merlin just hoists his bag up on one thin shoulder and then makes his way out of the room. Arthur follows, falling into step with him in the corridor.

"Are you really not going to speak to me?" Arthur says, swallowing a lump in his throat as Merlin cuts through the crowd. It's weirdly disconcerting, being ignored, as though Arthur is invisible and no-one can see him anymore. Especially being ignored by Merlin. It's like Arthur's right arm's suddenly fallen off.

Merlin turns suddenly into a classroom and Arthur follows him, not caring that this is blatantly not his lesson.

"I was only trying to help," he says, quietly, standing by Merlin's desk as he unpacks his bag.

Merlin opens up his book of war poetry and thumbs through the pages.

"I broke up with Mithian," Arthur says bluntly because he wants to surprise Merlin into speaking. It almost works, Merlin's hands definitely falter as they turn a page, and he hears a little intake of breath.

But just as he's wondering if he's cracked it, an imperious voice cuts through the air.

"Mr Pendragon, have you had a sudden change of heart towards the literary side of life? I can only assume you've decided to make a very late bid for an English Literature A-Level, as there's no other possible reason you should be standing in my class."

Mrs Loughton is bearing down on him, wire rimmed glasses pushed down to the edge of her nose.

"I wanted to sit in," Arthur says firmly.

"Discovered a sudden affinity for the war poets, have you?" Mrs Loughton says disbelievingly.

"Yes," Arthur says stoutly. "I like them, I… I think they're… great."

"Well, with insights like that I'm sure you'd be a marvellous addition to our little group. Pray tell, who is your favourite bard of the Great War, hmm?"

Arthur's mind does a frantic dash through everything he's ever known about poetry, and draws a gigantic, glaring blank.

_Some guy with a weird name, like Bassoon or something… or William something who did that one with the Latin in… oh bollocks to this…_

He's about to concede defeat when he hears a faint drumming noise below him. He looks down to see that while Merlin is still staring resolutely ahead of him, his finger is tapping insistently down on a page in his book. A page that says…

"Ivor Gurney," Arthur says triumphantly. "I like 'Strange Hells'."

Mrs Loughton looks completely wrong-footed.

"Yes, well… Gurney happens to be a favourite of mine, too." She scrutinises Arthur for a moment. "I suppose you can take a seat, just for this lesson."

Arthur nods his thanks and sits down next to Merlin. He hopes that Merlin's help might have indicated a cessation of hostilities but Merlin continues to blank him for the whole of the class.

Still, it meant something… Merlin didn't want to see Arthur embarrassed or made to look stupid, on some level he must still care…

He wonders about that little intake of breath when he mentioned Mithian.

It was true anyway, not some ploy he'd concocted. She'd come round on Sunday because he'd promised to cook her lunch but she'd found him hunched over his laptop in his bedroom, doing more research on eating disorders. He snapped the screen shut as soon as he saw her and then it was all 'what are you hiding from me?' and 'what's been going on?'

Arthur couldn't blame her. He'd been beyond absent as a boyfriend recently. He'd been cancelling dates left right and centre, acting distracted in her presence, blowing her off at school to chase Merlin. It was with a sudden ache that he realised she deserved much better than this: a barely-there boyfriend with no room for anything in his mind other than Merlin.

It was horrible though, doing it. She cried and he felt like the world's worst person.

But he knows he can only give his full focus to one thing at a time and right now that thing was Merlin. Even if said focus was pretending he didn't exist.

~III~

Merlin gives him the slip after English Lit. He doesn't show up to lunch either and Arthur isn't surprised. What does surprise him is that his friends at large seem to have finally clocked on to something not being right.

"What's wrong with Merlin?" Gwen says as she slips into the seat opposite Arthur, forgoing even a hello.

Arthur plays dumb.

"I don't know. Why would there be anything wrong with him?"

Lance gives him A Look across the table and even Gwaine rolls his eyes at Arthur's apparent obliviousness.

"Well, he hasn't spoken to any of us in days and he's not here for lunch as usual. Then there's the small matter of that mad dash out of Pizza Express, with you following him."

Gwen's giving Arthur a hard stare and he squirms, hating the fact that she can still read him so well, even though they're not together anymore.

"I don't know what happened-" he starts weakly and Freya cuts him off.

"What happened is that he went to the bathroom and you went after him and you were both gone for ages; then you both ran off. Clearly you know something."

They're all looking at him now and he's sweating slightly because he doesn't know what to say. He can't tell the truth because he'll kill any hope for reconciliation between him and Merlin. But he doesn't want to lie to his friends, they deserve more than that. And they're not stupid, they know something's up.

"Look, I… it's not really my place to say..."

"Were you arguing, Arthur?" Gwen's looking very intently at him.

"Why would we be arguing?" Arthur says defensively.

"Maybe… maybe Merlin said something you didn't like." Gwen's eyes are very bright.

"Like what?"

Gwen and Freya exchange a glance and Arthur gets an odd feeling, like the one he had with Hunith the other day, as though they're talking at cross purposes.

He's pleased to see Gwaine looks as confused as he is, but Lance is studiously looking down at his plate and just what the hell is going on here anyway?

"Can you just say what you're trying to say?" Arthur snaps because he's getting frustrated now and it seems like they've all come to the conclusion he's to blame for Merlin's disappearance.

No one says anything for ages and then Freya suddenly blurts out:

"Did you hook up with Merlin?"

"What the fuck?" Arthur says instantly because of all the things he might have expected, that one was precisely nowhere on his list.

Lance closes his eyes and Gwen's glaring daggers at Freya but other than Gwaine (judging by his open mouth) none of them seem exactly surprised by her question.

"Why the hell would any of you think that?" Arthur says slowly, his brain still trying to process the words.

"Because… because Merlin's been so sad lately and you two have stopped hanging around so much and then suddenly you're all best buds again and then we go out for that meal and you and Merlin have some kind of confrontation in the bathroom and then…" Gwen trails off.

"I have a girlfriend," Arthur hisses, even though that seems distinctly beside the point, and also…

"Didn't you break up yesterday?" Lance says quietly.

"Yes, thank you Lance, we did but I can assure it you it was nothing to do with some fucking imaginary affair I'm having with Merlin!"

Arthur gapes at all of them.

"This is such a fucking ridiculous conclusion to come to."

"Not that ridiculous," Gwaine says and Arthur spins round to glare at him.

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger," Gwaine says, putting his hands up in supplication. "This is the first I've heard of this too but I'm just saying, it's not beyond the realms of possibility, is it?"

"Why?" Arthur spits.

"Well it's always been a bit more than friendship with youse guys, hasn't it, and you were always like this little club of two, and the kid's been in love with you since God knows when and- what? What did I say?"

Lance is elbowing Gwaine viciously in the ribs but Arthur barely even notices because his mind is spinning like a high top.

_The kid's been in love with you since God knows when._

_That wasn't true._

_That couldn't be true._

_He would know if Merlin was…_

_Merlin._

In a sickening rush that whole confused conversation with Hunith on Friday night comes back to him and he finally understands what she was really talking about.

What had she said?

_I suppose the signs were there for years though really._

_You won't hate him, will you Arthur?_

_Because I don't think he could bear it._

"Oh my God," Arthur breathes and it's almost like the world tilts on its axis a bit.

Could Merlin really like him that way? And could he have never noticed?

Arthur thinks back to Merlin first coming out, thinks back to the time they spooned in his bed, the time he grazed his lips across his friend's…

His friends look panicked.

"Arthur… what Gwaine said… it's not-" Gwen can't seem to find the words but Arthur isn't interested anyway, he has to get up, get away and think.

"I have to go," he mutters, pulling back his chair and standing to leave. Then he sits back down.

"Do you know what's really offensive about all this? It's not that you all thought I was gay, because there's no shame in that, and it's not even that you thought that I was cheating on Mithian all this time. It's that you genuinely believed I would hook up with Merlin and then dump him like trash. Thanks for the vote of confidence."

They look stricken as he walks away. The anger is already draining out of his body; he'll probably be talking to them by the end of the day because honestly he doesn't have room for any thoughts right now other than ones of Merlin.

He has to get away, he can't think properly. He gets in his car, intending to drive back to his house, but somehow he ends up going in the opposite direction. He drives for an hour or so and parks in a field in what feels exactly like the middle of nowhere.

A whole hour's drive spent thinking and he still doesn't understand anything.

He tries to tell himself he still has no actual evidence that Merlin likes him, other than the suspicions of his friend. But something's changed inside him, it's like one of those picture illusions where you suddenly see the two faces and you can't find the vase anymore at all. Call it an instinct, a gut feeling, but somehow he knows it's true about Merlin's feelings.

There's a sudden jolt to his heart as he thinks about Merlin's current condition. Did he cause this? By never noticing, by unwittingly rejecting Merlin… Is he the reason Merlin stopped eating?

Arthur's breath is coming fast and he forces himself to calm down. All those books and websites he read, they all said the same thing. No-one is to blame for anorexia. Often it doesn't have one solid trigger. Friends and family often feel guilty but it isn't their fault.

Arthur tries very hard to believe it, sat in his car in the back end of beyond. But he has to admit it can't have helped Merlin.

Aside from the guilt, he tries to analyse how he feels in general about the news. It's a bit… odd, to say the least. Like Freya or Lance suddenly announcing they loved him, except much much weirder because it's Merlin, the best and closest friend he ever had. One of the most important people in his life.

It's almost like… he doesn't know. Like he's been playing a game for a long time and suddenly all the rules have changed and he can't tell where he stands anymore.

Will he act different around Merlin now? Should he? Does he need to tell Merlin that he knows, or will that upset his friend? But how can he go back to pretending he doesn't have a clue?

Gwen's been phoning persistently for the last hour and he's been ignoring it because he can't quite shake the last vestiges of anger at her and all of them. But when his phone goes again he picks it up because they all need to present a united front now to help Merlin, and anyway, he could seriously do with some advice.

"Arthur! I'm so so sorry! I don't know what we were thinking, accusing you of that, of course none of us think you'd ever hurt Merlin! God, please don't be mad, we were idiots!"

Arthur lets Gwen burble on for a while, smiling in spite of himself. Gwen hates to fall out with anyone, she told him once it makes her stomach hurt.

"Shouldn't you be in class?" he says drily.

"Fuck class," Gwen says vehemently and just like that Arthur forgives her, because Gwen never swears or skips class so she obviously really wanted to make up with him.

"Alright, calm down Guinevere, no need to go all James Dean on me."

He can almost hear her smiling down the phone; especially since he called her Guinevere, her pet name when they were dating. He hasn't used it since then, and using it now feels like they might finally be moving onto a new chapter.

"Listen, Arthur, about Merlin…"

"Is it true?" he says, grin fading.

"I… yes, I think so. It's just, the way he acts around you and looks at you… it seems so…"

"That's not evidence," Arthur reminds her, and there's a slight pause, like Gwen is trying to psych herself up to say something.

"There was a thing… erm, it was just after you and Mithian started going out, that night we met her for the first time in the pub. And you guys went home and we all stayed a bit but then Merlin got really hammered so I volunteered to drive him home. And he was sort of mumbling to himself, you know like he does when he's drunk, and then he…"

Gwen takes a breath. Arthur is gripping the phone very tightly to his ear.

"Then he starting crying and slurring about how he loved you and it wasn't fair and he thought… I shouldn't be telling you this."

"Go on," Arthur says, knuckles white.

"He... he thought since me and you broke up that maybe something might happen but then you got with Mithian… and I don't know Arthur, he wasn't really talking sense, he could barely get the words out."

"Did you talk about it… later?"

"No," Gwen says. "I got him home to Hunith and the next day I sort of brought it up and tried to talk about it but it's clear he didn't remember anything. Not like he was lying to save face, like he really was drawing a blank. He really was insanely drunk. So we never talked about it."

Arthur nearly says 'you should have told me' but he sees why she couldn't so he bites his tongue.

"Arthur?" Gwen's voice is small. "I don't want to pry or anything, but if the other night was nothing to do with Merlin's… feelings… then what did happen?"

Arthur leans his forehead against the car window, watching his breath steam up the glass.

"I… I will tell you, at some point, but I just can't right now. Is that okay?"

"Yeah," Gwen says softly. "Is it… should I be worried?"

Arthur closes his eyes.

"Just… just look after Merlin okay? Any way you can."

"Of course," Gwen says. "Are you coming back to school?"

"Not today." Arthur says. "But I'll be in tomorrow. And I might need some advice, okay?"

"Okay," Gwen says. "Come find me."

He says goodbye and hangs up, then abruptly grabs his keys and gets out of the car.

It's warm for April but it rained all night so the grass is wet, he can feel his trainers sink into the muddy ground as he walks across the field.

He walks aimlessly, climbing over gates and scaling dry stone walls, enjoying the drawn out expanse of fields around him. There's not a soul in sight and it's what he needs right now.

When he finally heads back to the car he takes a couple of wrong turns but eventually makes it back. The sky is beginning to darken and he fires off a quick text to his father to tell him he won't make it back in time for dinner. He'll get in trouble for that later but he doesn't care.

He throws his phone on the passenger seat and then picks it up again, tapping out a message to Merlin.

'_I know you're not speaking to me but you're still my best friend and I'm not going anywhere. So that's that.'_

Then he starts the car and heads for home.


	11. Jumping Jacks

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Angst

A/N: Thanks to all for following/reviewing etc.! I hope you're enjoying it.

~III~

**"He's been paying his dues to gravity****  
****in dud coin once a week**

**checking in on the doctor's scales****  
****which wobble to a judgement: **_**holding steady**_

**though he's less and less able to hoist****  
****what mass he still has, and he sways,**

**the rush of faintness in his ears like sea,****  
****hissing in over mud and in and in**

**as he steadies himself and walks towards it****  
****with stones in his pockets, adding one a week."**

Merlin settles into a routine. He sets his alarm for 6 every morning and does his exercises. Fifty sit ups, thirty press ups, fifty jumping jacks, thirty lunge jumps. He has to stop the running on the spot because it makes too much noise. Hunith has switched back to the day shift but she doesn't get up until seven so he has one hour without scrutiny, as long as he's quiet enough.

He hadn't felt like the exercises were necessary before, but his new food regime has changed everything. Hunith made him see a nutritionist at the hospital and sat in the appointment with him while the guy had talked about food groups and balance and fatty acids. He was a slightly uninterested looking man with a straggly red beard and chewed up fingernails. When he took Merlin's blood to test for anaemia, his hands were unpleasantly clammy. He clucked his tongue dramatically when Merlin stepped up on his scales and there followed a prolonged lecture about healthy BMIs and muscle weight and bone density. Merlin was only half-listening but Hunith seemed to have memorised every word. A copy of his new diet plan is sellotaped to the fridge _(like some kind of fucking beacon of reprimand, calling him out on his weakness every time he walks through the kitchen)_ and Hunith refers to it as though it's scripture. She sits with him for breakfast – porridge with banana on top, or cereal and yoghurt, or grapefruit and toast, or any other combination that the nutritionist recommended.

Lunch she can't control, of course, and he makes no pretence at trying now that his pact with Arthur is gone. Arthur might tell Hunith but Merlin senses he won't risk driving the wedge between the two of them even deeper.

Dinner is another matter. He can just about force down the breakfasts; the porridge at least slips easily down his throat and it sits less heavily on his stomach than he thought it might. The fruit, too, is usually light enough to ignore. But dinner is near impossible. Hunith takes quite literally the nutritionist's suggestion that dinner should ideally be one third vegetables, one third protein, and one third carbohydrates – she practically divides Merlin's plate to ensure precision. And it's all the food he hates the most – rice and potatoes and pasta and eggs and cheese – things that sit weighty inside him.

He has to get clever. He can hide some small amounts away in his napkin, and he makes sure to wear hoodies to dinner so he can shove food into his pockets. Hunith watches him like a hawk the first few days but she relaxes after a while. He's won her trust through the path of least resistance; by never putting up a fuss after that first night they talked it through, his mother thinks he's come around to her way of thinking. He accepts the nutritionist's planned fortnightly standing appointment without objection, and he allows her to make arrangements for him to see a therapist specialising in eating problems at the local retreat centre. So she gives him leeway and he takes full advantage, hiding what food he can, making a great show of chewing the rest.

But sometimes it's still not enough and he has to slip to his bedroom when the meal is over and Hunith's washing up to throw up into a plastic bag. It's disgusting and he hates it but the bathroom is right next to the kitchen and he can't get away with doing it there. His bedroom is the furthest room from the kitchen and it's too far away for Hunith to hear him. He hides the plastic bags and sneaks them out of the house to the bin round the corner when he gets the chance. It's shaming and it makes his gut clench but he tells himself it's only for a few months more; then he'll be at uni and he can eat what he wants for dinner, even if what he wants is nothing.

The exercises help him panic less; make him feel more prepared to take on breakfast in the morning. And when his first fortnightly weigh-in comes in, he tries the oldest trick in the book and is amazed to see it work. He drinks nearly a gallon of water and loads his back pockets with small measuring weights he steals from the science lab. Hunith can't get the time off work to come to his second appointment and as he suspects, the nutritionist isn't anywhere as observant when his mother isn't present. He asks if Merlin's been following the diet plan, checks the food diary he asked Merlin to keep, and then talks a bit more in general about healthy choices – but it's all conducted in a rather distant way, like his mind's elsewhere. When he finally tells Merlin to get on the scales, he hums in approval.

"You've gained four pounds, good job! Keep it up and we'll have you body building in no time."

Merlin forces a smile and rushes through his goodbyes, mindful of the pain in his bladder. Luckily there's a bathroom two doors down from the office and he slips inside. He feels almost giddy as he washes his hands – _it worked, he's doing it!_

~III~

He's so buoyed by his success in this area that he feels fairly confident about meeting the therapist. The hard part is the physical side – an hour a week spent talking seems easy in comparison.

But the therapist is not quite what he expected. She's about fifty, dressed in non-descript clothes with her long hair pulled back in a messy bun. She smiles and introduces herself as Karen and invites him to sit. It's ridiculous but it suddenly occurs to him that he expected some kind of long couch, like in the movies. There isn't one, just a perfectly normal chair which he sits in, and she sits in the chair opposite, no desk between them.

"So why don't you tell me a bit about yourself, Merlin? You're doing your A-Levels now, is that right?"

"Yeah."

"Are you enjoying it?"

"No," he says instinctively and then wonders if that sounds hostile. "I mean, yes. Kind of. It's a lot of work."

She smiles.

"Don't remind me. I still have nightmares about my French A-Level. Which is your favourite subject?"

"I… I like English Lit."

"Oh yes?"

"Yeah, we um… we did Othello last term and now we're doing war poetry and it's… I like it."

"Have you always liked English?"

"Uh, yeah… I guess. I read a lot and I – it's usually the subject I do best in."

"Ah, so you're a big reader?"

"Yeah, I… aren't you going to ask me about the eating thing?" Merlin blurts out and instantly blushes. He just doesn't really understand where Karen's going with this whole English thing. Is she trying to find out if his studies are affected? Or does she think reading too much has made him ill? But that makes no sense-

"Do you want to talk about eating?" she says evenly, as though Merlin hasn't just randomly interrupted their conversation.

"Well, no, but I thought… I mean, that's why my mum wanted me to come, isn't it?"

"Your mother contacted me because she was concerned about your eating habits, yes. But she's not here now Merlin, and I'm happy to talk about what you want to talk about."

"I just…" Merlin feels foolish. "Why are you asking about English?"

Karen smiles again.

"I was genuinely just trying to get to know you a little better. I'm not here to trap you, there wasn't an ulterior motive."

"Oh."

"Do you have anything you want to talk about?"

"I…" Merlin thinks back to his original plan. "Er, I mean, I think I know why I haven't been eating that well lately. If you want to know."

Karen nods pleasantly.

Merlin launches into his pre-prepared story about how hard it is being the only gay guy at his school, and how he recently fell for a boy in his class who kissed him and then rejected him. He explains that he felt so bad he wanted to lose a bit of weight to show the boy how badly he'd hurt Merlin.

"I guess I had some fantasy if I got a bit skinny and gaunt, he'd realise what kind of effect he'd had on me." Merlin tries to inject the right note of hope into his voice. "And it might be just enough for him to take me back."

He sighs gently.

"It was stupid. And when Mum confronted me I just felt so bad because I hadn't even realised what I'd been doing to myself. It was a real shock when I was weighed at the nutritionists and saw how much I'd lost. I guess you could call it a wake-up call."

He wonders if that last sentence is a bit too much. He sneaks a look at Karen but her face is impassive.

"Anyway, I realised the guy at school wasn't worth my time. So now I just want to concentrate on putting some weight on and getting back to normal."

He finishes with a sort of hopeful smile, trying to project the image of someone who'd learnt his lesson.

Karen nods, but to his surprise she doesn't ask him any questions about his story. Instead she says:

"What kind of things did you do to lose weight?"

He tells the truth mostly, just skipping meals and making excuses, but he leaves out all the parts about Arthur. It doesn't seem to matter though because after he's finished, her next question brings him directly into the frame:

"Your mum said you collapsed in school and a friend had to bring you to the nurse's office. She says it was this same friend that came to her and told her you'd been having problems eating."

"Well, clearly my mum told you quite a lot," Merlin snaps before he can stop himself.

Karen doesn't look in the least bit offended.

"She told me what she thinks. I'd like to know what you think."

Merlin shrugs.

"So is this a close friend of yours?"

"Sort of. I mean, I've known him a long time. But we've sort of drifted apart."

"Do you know what it was that lead him to approach your mum about you?"

"It was an overreaction. Arthur-" the name seems to slip out unbidden, "-noticed I was losing weight and he was worried. I should have just told him about the guy and everything but I didn't want to because… because I don't know how cool he is about me being gay."

Merlin does feel guilty about that lie because Arthur's never been anything less than supportive but the whole 'struggling with sexuality' angle is the tack he's chosen so he may as well stick to it.

"So yeah, I froze him out instead and I guess he got so concerned that he came to my mum."

"How did you feel when he did that?"

"Oh, well, I mean I was annoyed I suppose, but like I said earlier, I needed the wake-up call so I guess it was a good thing after all."

That sounds like such a load of bullshit that he's sure Karen will call him on it, but she merely makes a quick note and then asks him about other causes of stress in his life.

When the hour is up, Merlin gets to his feet quickly, trying to look like a person relieved of a heavy burden.

"Thanks so much," he says. "It was great to get everything out, I feel better now."

"I'm pleased to hear it," Karen says warmly. "From what I've heard today, I think you would benefit from some more sessions with me to talk out some more of those concerns."

Merlin pauses in the act of picking up his bag.

"More sessions?"

"Yes. I think that, if you'll let me help, we can resolve some of the issues that are making life difficult for you."

"Oh, I… I'm not really…"

"You can talk to Dave outside, he's the receptionist, and he'll set you up with another appointment for next week."

Karen smiles and opens the door to her office.

Defeated, Merlin leaves. There's clearly more to Karen than he initially thought.

~III~

School is both more and less difficult. Less because exams are fast approaching and most people are spending their breaks and free periods buried in books and notes and so he has a valid excuse to take up residence in the library. The useful ban on talking means none of his friends can force him into a discussion there. More because... well, Arthur.

He was sure that Arthur would have been driven away now after three weeks of the silent treatment but his friend is awfully persistent. Since that first Monday when he caved enough to help save Arthur from the wrath of Mrs Loughton, he hasn't communicated with him again. The same could not be said from the other side. Arthur texted semi-constantly. After Monday's serious text about 'not going anywhere', they were all newsy, trivial texts, as though him and Merlin were still perfectly good friends.

_'Have you seen Val's new haircut? It looks like a drunk monkey did it.'_

_'You missed Mr Kinnear chasing Gwaine across the sports field because he was convinced Gwaine had stolen his dry erase pens. Lucky Gwaine had already stashed them in Lance's locker…'_

_'Uther just gave me a forty minute lecture on the importance of picking the right socks to go with a business suit. I shit you not.'_

Merlin still tries his hardest not to even look in Arthur's direction, but Arthur has taken to acting as though Merlin's somehow gone mute and he's just filling in both sides of the conversation. He sits next to him in Politics and chats away as normal; sometimes he pitches up in the library and whispers questions about revision under the librarian's watchful eye. He never seems perturbed by the lack of an answer.

He sometimes slips chocolate bars and apples into Merlin's bag too. Merlin makes a point of dropping them in the bin in front of Arthur if he can but Arthur never reacts.

Sometimes he feels incredibly resentful of Arthur's presence because it's hard enough to concentrate on his revision anyway with his head aching and his vision blurring when he stares too long at one page. The familiar dull ache in his stomach only intensifies when Arthur sits down next to him, like Arthur somehow makes him more aware of his hunger.

Other times he feels so tired and worn down and miserable that he wants nothing more than to rest his head on Arthur's shoulder and feel the warmth of his friend seep into his skin.

He's always cold nowadays.

One morning he's halfway through his exercise routine when the room starts to spin around him and he crashes to the floor as everything goes black. He wakes not too long after with a throbbing in his head and the sharp taste of bile in his mouth.

He decides to give up on the routine for that day but guilt sees him spend his lunchtime running laps in the school gym; heart pounding in his ears as he goes round and round.


	12. Ain't No Cure For Love

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Masturbation and porn watching. Do I need to warn about porn watching? Who knows? There you go, anyway.

A/N: Thank you so much to mersan123, India Moore, Aerist, bubzchoc, lovePEOPLEandCOWBOY, dragooonthegreat, grayember13, DeadNotSleeping2048 for your lovely reviews, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it!

~III~

"**To be perfect…? 'Nothing's  
perfect in this life,' I say.**

**Mealy, middle aged wisdom,**

**eat your words. See how  
precisely he'll come to agree."**

Merlin not talking to him hadn't gotten any easier. He's keeping up his campaign of aimless chatter, hoping against hope that he'll wear his friend down somehow, but Merlin's showing little sign of buckling.

Merlin's showing little sign of anything, actually. His face seems permanently drawn; a little crease etched into his forehead as though a frown is never far away. He never puts his hand up in class, or makes small talk with any other students. Arthur is in constant contact with Hunith and she's reassured him that Merlin is putting on weight but Arthur can see no difference. In fairness, it would be hard to spot the change under those baggy, long sleeved shirts that Merlin wears every day, even with the recent warm weather.

He has to trust Hunith's wisdom because he's getting nothing from Merlin. Gwen and the others are being similarly stonewalled, although they've put it down to exam stress and Merlin's obsessive revision. Gwen hasn't forgotten Arthur asking her to look out for Merlin, and occasionally she looks at him with a question in her eyes but it's not time yet. If he has any hope of repairing his relationship with Merlin, he can't tell anyone else.

_Maybe when Merlin's better…_

He's still worrying about Merlin's health semi-constantly, but now there's a new train of thought in his head.

He cannot, for the life of him, figure out how he feels about Merlin being in love with him.

It's weird. That's definitely the first and foremost feeling. All these years being friends and yet there was something he didn't know. Something big. And it changes everything.  
Yet somehow, it also changes nothing, because it's still Merlin at the end of the day. Still Merlin and Arthur.

He's mad at himself for not noticing and he's mad at Merlin for not telling him, though he knows how unreasonable that is. And he feels guilty for all the times he went on about girls around Merlin, or ditched him to hang out with Gwen, or just generally acted totally oblivious. But how could he have known?

He scrutinises Merlin for signs of it sometimes, although he has no idea what he's looking for. A tattoo on Merlin's neck reading 'Yes Arthur I Love You and Here's What You Should Do About It'?

Then, there's the other feeling, the one he can't quite face up to. That he's flattered is okay, he tells himself, it's natural to react that way when someone likes you. That bit doesn't trouble him so much. But there's something else mixed in with the flattery. Something fluttery and tingly that doesn't feel at all conflicted about the news. And that's the bit of him he can't quite hold up to scrutiny, the bit he's trying his best to ignore.

It's pointless speculating anyway. The one person who could shed some light on the situation is the one person no longer speaking to him.

Besides, perhaps since Arthur told Hunith, Merlin doesn't love him anymore.

Arthur can't explain why the idea of that makes him feel so bereft.

He's not sure whether he's coming or going, to be honest. All this worry about Merlin, and then the break up with Mithian and the stress of A-Levels coming and now this new piece of information. He feels like his brain never stops turning it all over.

He's in over his head and unfortunately there's only one person who can help him.

~III~

Arthur genuinely doesn't want to talk to Gwaine. It's not that he doesn't love his friend (incredibly platonically, of course) but Gwaine is definitely not one to go to for serious conversations. Gwen is usually the friend for that but it has to be a guy this time. And Lance is certainly ten times better than handling real stuff than Gwaine but unfortunately, he's just not the right man for the job. He's too strait-laced for this particular problem and Arthur needs someone with a little more… life experience.

Doesn't mean he's not dreading it though.

It's hard to get Gwaine on his own but he deliberately way-lays him on the way to football practice, and by the time they get into the changing room, the others have already gone.

Despite the success of his plan, Arthur still has no idea how to start the bloody conversation. He fumbles around getting changed, hoping inspiration will strike him, but three minutes later all he has is:

"So, Gwaine…"

"Mmm?"

"The whole Merlin thing…" Arthur says.

"The whole Merlin being in love with you thing?" Gwaine says casually, fiddling with his shin pad.

"Shut up!" Arthur hisses, even though he knows it's only him and Gwaine in the changing room.

"Bee in your bonnet, Princess?" Gwaine smirks, and God did Arthur ever hate that stupid nickname right now.

"Forget it," he grits out but Gwaine catches him on the arm as he goes to leave.

"Oh come on, I was only messing. What were you gonna say?"

Arthur contemplates Gwaine for a second and sees that his friend is in one of his rare sincere moods. He decides to take the risk.

"I feel… I feel really weird about it."

Gwaine nods.

"Uncomfortable?"

"Yes. No! I mean, not the way you think, I'm not disgusted or anything. I just…"

Arthur struggles for a second. He can think of literally no way to phrase this.

"Ever since you guys told me, I've been thinking about… or not thinking about, but trying to figure out…"

"Whether you like him back?" Gwaine says, in his usual unruffled tone. Arthur gapes for a second, considering denying it, but something about Gwaine's nonchalance – as though they were just discussing the new Arsenal line up – calms him down a bit.

He sits on the bench.

"Yeah, I guess."

He gives Gwaine a sidelong look.

"You've er… before, I mean, there was that thing with that guy…"

"That guy who blew me?" Gwaine says with characteristic frankness.

"Yeah, that."

Never one to hold back on details of his private life, Gwaine had proceeded to tell them all in great detail what had happened when he went to a gay bar in Berlin last summer.  
The girls had been intrigued, Lance had been half-exasperated with his friend's ability to get laid wherever he went, and Merlin had blushed pink and gone all quiet, the way he usually did when they talked about sex. Merlin had wryly commented to him later that it was a pretty poor show that his straight friend got more gay action than he did.

Arthur hadn't been particularly interested in the specifics at the time, but suddenly he wants to know more.

"Were you freaked out?"

Gwaine shrugs.

"No, I mean I was hammered, and he was a good looking guy and I thought, why not? When in Berlin, do as the Berlinians do, etc. etc."

"Was it…" Arthur can't believe he's asking this. "Was it good?"

"When has it ever not felt good to get your dick sucked?"

He had a point there.

"Since then, have you ever wanted to…"

"I've never gone looking for it," Gwaine says contemplatively. "But I can appreciate a nice looking guy when I see one, and I suppose maybe one day I might give it another go."

"Really?"

"Sure, why not? Life's all about the living, right? I thought once or twice about offering to relieve Merlin of that pesky virginity of his but he's so into you I doubt he'd accept."

Arthur's pretty sure his jaw has actually dropped, if that doesn't just happen in books.

"You would… with Merlin…"

"Sure. Kid's obviously scared about his first time, got it all twisted up in his head, I thought it might be nice to do it with a friend, you know?"

"That's mental." Arthur says finally.

"Well if you want to volunteer in my place…" Gwaine says, grinning, and Arthur can feel his cheeks heat up.

"Ha, ha," he says, and then sighs.

"I dunno what to do."

Gwaine looks sympathetic.

"It's a weird one, I'll give you that. My advice, don't overanalyse. Work out what you want."

"How?" Arthur can't help but ask.

"Watch some gay porn. Might help you figure things out."

Arthur realises he must look scandalised because Gwaine laughs.

"Don't overanalyse, Princess! Just relax."

Arthur rolls his eyes as he gets to his feet, but he claps Gwaine on the shoulder as they head towards the pitch.

~III~

He has absolutely zero intention of taking Gwaine's suggestion. But when he gets home that night, it niggles at him. When he lies down on his bed, he feels somehow nervous and excited, like something's buzzing under his skin.

He's out of options. Why the fuck not?

He has a beer, then another. Halfway through his third, he makes his decision and flips open his laptop, painfully glad that Uther's working late that night.

Searching for gay porn seems daunting, somehow. What if he gets a really weird one? What should he type in for just some plain old, no frills sex? He awkwardly clicks around one website, cringing at some of the more explicit titles, and finally finds one that looks fairly tame. He drains the rest of his beer in one long gulp and clicks play.

It's two men in the gym changing room, predictably enough. Well, no-one watches porn for originality, he supposes. They're both early twenties, one blonde and one dark haired. Arthur supposes that might be why he clicked on it and the thought makes him blush. But while the blonde guy perhaps does bear a passing resemblance to himself, Arthur admits reluctantly, the dark haired guy isn't much like Merlin. He's too built for one thing, muscly arms and broad shoulders. Not much like Merlin, with his concave stomach and his protruding collarbones…

_Stop it._

He can't think about that right now. He tries to focus on the video, where the guys are exchanging stilted compliments about each other's bodies. Good to see the acting is of the same poor standard as in straight porn, he thinks wryly. Then they both begin to strip down for the shower.

It's okay, it's fine, he can appreciate the sculpted torsos and even when the underwear comes off he's prepared for it. But it's still a bit bizarre just staring at some other guy's dick like this because other than flashes in the football changing rooms (and it's not like he's really looking then) he never sees one.

If he was forcing himself to comment (and that is the whole point of this… experiment, anyway), he guesses the dark haired guy's dick is quite nice. Sort of quite straight, and clean looking. But even thinking that sends a flush to his cheeks, and makes him feel all weird. He quickly cracks open another beer and watched the men head into the shower. Then the blonde guy spins the other round, backs him up against the wall and starts kissing him.

And it's fine. It's kind of… it could be kind of hot actually. He doesn't know. Maybe it's just the alcohol warming through his body but it's not hard to look at. Two lean bodies pressed together, under the spray, kissing passionately.

Arthur shifts in his seat, aware that something may be stirring in his general crotch area. Maybe. Just a little bit.

But then the blonde guy suddenly breaks off the kiss and pushes the other guy down on his knees. And the dark haired guy opens his mouth and then…

Okay, this is weird.

This is really weird.

Not necessarily in a bad way, but just… obviously, he's been in similar situations himself but two men doing it seems so… alien to him? Or something.

He aims his stare determinedly at the blonde guy's face for a bit but then concedes there's no real point in doing this if he doesn't do it properly. So he forces himself to look at the, uh, main attraction.

The dark haired guy's lips are working up and down the other man, all pink and rosy. His cheeks are hollowing as the blonde grips his hair and moans above him.

The idea of being the man on his knees is a bit too much for Arthur right now, but he tries to imagine himself as the one on the receiving end. Surely it wouldn't be that different from doing it with a girl? A mouth is a mouth after all…

His crotch is tingling again. Slowly, experimentally, he undoes his jeans and pushes one hand down into his boxers. Keeping his eyes on the screen, he starts to stroke.

The blonde man looks very close to coming, but suddenly he lets go of the other one's hair and pushes him off. The dark haired man wipes his mouth, grinning, as the blonde pulls him back to his feet and kisses him again.

Arthur's cock gives a definite interested twitch at that.

But then suddenly the blonde man turns the other round and shoves him against the wall and then his fingers are shoving up inside him and he spits on his free hand, bends the other guy over slightly and then _Jesus Christ, no_-

Arthur slams the laptop shut.

That was just a bit too much. He'd been doing fine (_more than fine_) with the stuff before but then it all got a bit heavy and there were fingers and thrusting and it was all going way too fast and surely spit is a terrible substitute for lube, anyway?

Arthur forces himself to breathe, to calm down. He might have stretched himself a bit far, for a first attempt.

His other hand is still inside his boxers, although his arousal is sadly wilted now. But maybe he should try something a bit less full on? Just use his imagination so things wouldn't get out of hand?

He tries to picture a guy, any guy. Lance and Gwaine both flash into his mind but that seems horribly wrong somehow. Plus he doubts even the full force of his imagination could shut Gwaine's mouth long enough for him to get an erection.

He casts his mind around a bit more, then settles on Percy, the assistant football coach. He's considered a good looking guy, judging by all the girls who suddenly develop a great interest in football when he leads practice. He's stereotypically handsome at least, the kind of guy it would be easy to be attracted to.

Arthur gives it a go. He imagines Percy coming up to him after practice, maybe complimenting him on his footwork. Except that that's horrendously cheesy so he decides to just cut the dialogue and dive straight in. He imagines Percy taking his shirt off, imagines leaning in for a kiss, right there in the changing rooms…

Except suddenly it's horribly reminiscent of the video he just watched and he shudders, switching location quickly. Except he somehow can't really imagine Percy outside of a football setting, and the very image of him seems to be dissolving right before his eyes, whilst his own cock is resolutely uninterested.

He very gingerly opens his laptop again, with the vague idea of maybe just looking at some Google images to help him along. He quickly exits the screen that was open, leaving him starting at his desktop background.

Which happens to be a picture of Merlin and him.

Well, he supposes this is what he was trying to avoid all along. The most obvious solution, possibly the only definitive answer to the question of how he feels about Merlin.

And yet it seems so unsavoury, somehow. He's known Merlin since they were thirteen and now he's staring at a picture of him from Arthur's birthday party last year and trying to get his rocks off.

_Merlin might have done exactly the same thing,_ an extremely unhelpful voice in his head supplies. He blushes at the thought of Merlin getting off imagining him. But mixed in with the embarrassment is a tiny hint of something else…

He recognises this feeling, even if he doesn't want to admit it. It's the same feeling he had when he brushed his lips against Merlin when they were fifteen, the same feeling he had when he walked in on Merlin and Gilli a few weeks ago.

Not jealously exactly, not possessiveness exactly, but some indefinable feeling deep inside him that Merlin was somehow his. His to look after; his to protect and laugh with and talk to and a hundred others things he can't put a name to.

And something much more selfish than that too. The fact that he wants to be the centre of Merlin's world. When they talked that night about Merlin getting off with Mordred, about Merlin being gay, Arthur was gripped by a sudden fear. Because until then he and Merlin had matched each other, pace for pace, and now it was suddenly like Merlin had run off on his own path, a path Arthur couldn't follow him down. And when he leaned forward and kissed him, it was like he was trying to say all those things at once; don't forget me. Don't leave me behind. _Remember that you're mine._

But it's wrong, it's all wrong, Arthur knows it. Wrong to want Merlin to always be there for him, to fit in around his girlfriends and his football practice, to come running when Arthur needs him. Wrong for him to want Merlin to care for him above all others.

Arthur is suddenly rent apart by self-loathing, bitter and strong in his throat. And he hardly seems to know what he's doing as he concentrates very hard on Merlin's laughing face in the picture before him. He strokes himself painfully hard, imagining Merlin in front of him, imagining kissing his neck, running his hands through Merlin's messy hair. He imagines Merlin smiling, the way he is in the picture, the way he hasn't in real life for a very long time. He's palming himself rough and fast, there's nothing tender or gentle about and even fantasy Merlin seems to realise this because the smile fades from his face and then he's taking his shirt off and suddenly Arthur can see his skeletal shoulders and hollow rib cage and it's terrible but he's too far gone and comes with a gasp.

He slams his laptop shut for the second time that night, unable to bear Merlin's face beaming out at him. He sits there for a while before he cleans up, fighting the inexplicable urge to cry.

~III~

Thanks for reading! Appreciate you sticking with me. Sorry that this chapter was so awkward and weird, but Arthur is feeling awkward and weird so hopefully it works.


	13. This is the Way the World Ends

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Just plain old angst

A/N: Thank you so much to dragooonthegreat, Aerist, BleedingOpal, lovePEOPLEandCOWBOY, helenealbra, and bubzchoc for your wonderful reviews!

~III~

**He left home months ago.**  
**Somehow we never noticed.**  
**He was going solo**

**as a conjurer:**  
**the egg we found rotting**  
**in the body-folds of the sofa;**

**caked wads**  
**of tissues in the bin with Weetabix**  
**compacted in them like the Mob's**

**car-crusher sandwiches;**  
**potatoes spirited away**  
**with one pass of the baggy-wristed**

**sweater he draped**  
**on his bones. (What applause**  
**when he whips it off one day**

**and he's gone!)**

Merlin's head hurts. The rest of him doesn't feel too great either; the ulcers in his mouth are tender and sore, his stomach is twisted with a gnawing ache, and his eyes are stinging. But it's his head that's monopolising his attention right now; a dull, pounding pain that leaves him unable to concentrate, or even to hear a word being said to him.

"…don't look well…"

Someone seems to be speaking to him but he can only make out snatches of words.

"…working so much…"

If he just focus his eyes properly for a second, if he could just get a break from the steady throbbing in his head…

"…take you home…"

He blinks hard once, twice, and the world comes back into focus.

"Merlin? Are you listening?"

Gwen's face looms above him, expression anxious.

"What?" he says, then: "yeah, course."

"So you'll let Lance take you home?" Gwen says, and he looks up to see Lance hovering behind her.

"What? No, I don't need to go home."

"But Merlin, you don't look well at all."

"I'm fine."

He might have spoken a little loudly because the librarian looks over to shoot them all a glare.

"She's right, Merlin," Lance chimes in. "You look awful."

"Well, revision's not exactly a barrel of laughs, is it?" Merlin shoots back but he's so tired that there's no bite to it.

"You can take one day off." Lance says firmly. "You need to be in bed, come on."

"Guys, I really can't-"

"Please, sweetheart," Gwen says and he sees her eyes are shining, as though she's trying not to cry.

Gwen only calls him sweetheart when she's sad. Or afraid.

"Okay, fine," he says because he can't take anything in with this bitch of a headache anyway, so revising seems like a big waste of time.

And he hasn't got the energy to argue with his friends.

Gwen walks him to the car and gives him a hug, promising to call him later.

When he climbs into the passenger seat, he's hit by another wave of pain and he massages his temples.

"There's paracetemol in the glove compartment," Lance says, and Merlin gratefully dry swallows two as Lance starts the car.

Lance makes a few comments as he drives but otherwise the journey is mostly silent. When they reach Merlin's flat, he expects Lance to stay in the car. But Lance parks up and follows him into the house.

It's all too painfully reminiscent of the time he collapsed at school and Arthur took him home, so Merlin decides to nip it in the bud early.

"Thanks mate, I really appreciate it. I'm gonna go straight to bed, like you said, so…"

"Do you mind if we talk first?" Lance says quietly.

Merlin does mind, he minds very much. He's in no mood for a lecture, or even a gentle discussion. He didn't work so hard to get rid of Arthur to have Lance fall right into his place.

"Lance, my head is absolutely killing; I'm not really up for a talk right now. Maybe if you ring me in a few hours-"

"I promise I won't keep you long," Lance says in that same quiet voice. "You don't even have to talk back. Please just give me two minutes."

Merlin wants to protest but yet again, he feels too tired to argue; like his capacity for logic and reason has gone all fuzzy.

He sits down on the sofa and says, "Just two minutes," rubbing at his eyes.

Lance sits next to him and doesn't speak for a long moment.

"I know something's wrong," he says at last, and when Merlin opens his mouth, he puts up his hand. "I'm not going to ask what it is. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But if you do want to, I will be here to help, in whatever way you need."

Lance's voice remains gentle but there's a slight tremor in it when he speaks again.

"I don't want to push you. I just want to say that you should talk about what's happening, and you should find someone to support you. It doesn't have to be me. But please don't try and do it all on your own."

Merlin can feel tears pricking at the corner of his eyes and it's so stupid because Lance has got it all twisted and he doesn't need any help. He should tell him that but he finds he can't form the words.

Lance gets to his feet.

"My time's up," he says. Then he reaches down to squeeze Merlin's shoulder before leaving the room.

It takes Merlin an age to finally get up and walk to his bedroom, and it's more to do with Lance's words than how tired he is.

~III~

Seeing Karen continues to be complicated. Without ever insisting on it, or even bringing up any difficult topic directly, she seems to have wheedled an awful lot out of him against his will. She's apparently immune to his attempts to change the subject, and she also has an uncanny sense for when he's prevaricating or lying. Not that she ever accuses him of doing so; she just somehow brings the conversation back around to the original question.

Arthur comes up, sometimes. Karen has managed to ascertain that Merlin is no longer speaking to him.

"Are you angry at Arthur?"

"No," Merlin says automatically. It's his fourth session with Karen and he's still on edge around her. He can't keep all his lies consistent in his head, and he's pretty sure she knows them all to be untrue anyway. She has a way of catching him off guard that makes him reveal more than he intends, and he hates it.

It's also hard to track what Karen knows and what she doesn't. Hunith told her everything that she knew from Arthur, but Merlin's never quite figured out exactly what Arthur said to his mother that night, or what's been said since in their clandestine phone conversations. He has to play it by ear; wait for Karen to bring incidents up first, and proceed cautiously lest he let slip any new information.

"But you won't speak to him," Karen says.

"It's hard to explain."

Karen looks at him expectantly.

"I'm not mad, I just… I don't want to deal with him right now."

"Why not?"

"'Cause it's just…it's hassle."

"In what way?"

"You know, he's all… he blows everything out of proportion."

"Do you feel he blew your eating problems out of proportion when he told your mother?"

"Yes! It was a massive overreaction, and it wasn't anything to do with him anyway."

"You think he should have kept quiet?"

"I think he should have trusted me to sort it out!"

"It sounds like you are a little angry at him, Merlin."

Merlin blinks.

"I… well… yeah, maybe I am. He made my mum worry and now I have to follow this stupid diet and waste my time at the nutritionist's and come see you-" Merlin breaks off, blushing. "Er, no offence."

"None taken," Karen smiles.

"And all for no reason, just because he thought something was wrong."

Karen nods.

"I understand why you'd be angry," Karen says. "Can I ask, have you ever looked at it from your friend Arthur's point of view?"

"Well I know what he was thinking 'cause he-"

"Wait a second." Karen holds up her hand. "Let's go back to the beginning. Trace it through together."

Merlin shrugs in compliance.

"So you collapsed in school and Arthur took you home, believing you to have not been eating properly-"

"But it was just the flu," Merlin cuts in.

"Well, you knew that. But from Arthur's perspective, all that he saw was you collapsing. It must have been scary for him."

"People faint sometimes," Merlin said sulkily.

"Then a few weeks after that, you made an agreement with Arthur to eat the same meals as he did. What prompted that decision?"

Merlin thinks back to that night; Gilli, the coke, the fight. Luckily, he's pretty sure Arthur hadn't reported the details to his mum.

"He just… he got all upset, and I wanted him to stop going on, so I agreed."

"'He got all upset'," Karen repeats. "Would it be fair to say that Arthur had probably spent the time between the two conversations worrying quite a lot about you?"

Merlin gives a non-committal nod.

"I think we can probably assume he was quite worried, if he persisted in talking to you about what was clearly a difficult topic for both of you."

Merlin doesn't respond to that.

"Then after two weeks, there was the incident in the restaurant. How do you think Arthur was feeling at that point?"

"He was overreacting, again-"

Karen interrupts.

"That's how you think he was behaving. How do you think he was feeling?"

Merlin starts to say he doesn't know, but then an image of Arthur's face that day flashes into his mind. He looked… distraught.

"I think he was afraid," Merlin admits. "And… and sad."

"Can you maybe understand a little more why he went to speak to your mother?"

"But he didn't need to," Merlin says, frustrated.

"If the positions were reversed and it was Arthur who had collapsed; Arthur who lost a significant amount of weight and then threw a meal up, what do you think you would have done?"

Merlin honestly can't answer. When put like that, he would have been concerned of course, but…

It would have been different if it was Arthur. If golden, healthy Arthur was losing weight, then clearly something would be wrong. But Merlin's always been like this, always gone through up and down phases with his appetite, it's not the same.

His thoughts are muddled, but Karen doesn't press him for an answer. She tells him to think about it for next time, and gets up to open the office door for him. When he stands, a familiar dizziness momentarily overwhelms him, but luckily Karen's back is to him and she doesn't notice.

~III~

Merlin thinks about what Karen said all the next day. The whole not speaking to Arthur thing was meant to help Arthur move on with his life, but even Merlin can admit it's been an abject failure from that perspective. Arthur was still trailing round after him, still offering him food and talking to him like they were friends. He can't seem to let go and now Merlin guiltily wonders if his blanket silence was perhaps crueller than intended. He's sure the original idea was noble, but has it reached the point where he's just trying to punish Arthur for all that's happened between them?

The thought makes Merlin deeply uneasy. His emotions have been all over the place recently and it's hard to pin down how he feels about anything. It's entirely possible that he's been letting past frustrations take the reins.

He needs to talk to Arthur. Not like they did before, there'll have to be boundaries. He doesn't want to discuss his physical or mental health, not now or ever. But if Arthur wants to talk revision, or films, or even football; Merlin can handle that.

It's only months till the end of the year, after all, and they'd all be drifting off to different parts of the country, to unis and gap years and jobs. He and Arthur might not see each other much after that, it would be nice if they could be on speaking terms again before the term ends.

_(the thought of growing apart from Arthur, of living in another city and seeing him only on holidays and trips home, and later perhaps not even then, makes Merlin feel sick at heart. But he always knew this time was coming, knew that Arthur was bound for greatness and a life beyond him; knew that he would be outgrown eventually)_

So it's settled. He'll talk to Arthur again. Once decided, Merlin feels a sudden urge to see Arthur right away. He checks his watch as he hurries out of the library, it's just gone five pm and Arthur should be finishing football practice right around now. Sure enough, when he crosses the playing field towards the changing rooms, he sees a trickle of people emerging.

"Hey Gavin, has Arthur already gone?" he says as one passes him by.

"No, him and Gwaine are still in there," the boy answers, jerking his thumb back towards the building.

Merlin nods. He goes and sits on the bench outside the changing room, next to the door so he can wait for Arthur to emerge.

There's an open window above him and he can hear Gwaine's distinctive laugh from inside.

"…as though she hadn't already sent me a picture of it!"

"Your life is ridiculous."

Arthur's clear voice carries through the window and Merlin pricks up his ears.

"No more ridiculous than yours, my friend. Did you think any more about my little suggestion?" Gwaine sing-songs.

"No I did not!" Arthur replies, and Merlin can tell just from his tone of voice that he's blushing.

"Coward. It's not even a big deal, everyone's watched a bit of gay porn at one time or another!"

Merlin blinks, unsure if he's heard wrong. Gay porn? What the hell? Why would Gwaine be suggesting Arthur watch gay porn?

"I highly doubt that."

"What, you think Gwen and Freya haven't? When Freya got drunk at New Year's, she told me she had a whole hard drive of-"

"Jesus!" Arthur hisses. "I do not need to hear that! Anyway, I don't care what everyone else does, it's not for me."

"Fine, whatever. So you got any other ways to figure out the whole Merlin thing?"

Merlin freezes. What Merlin thing? Does Gwaine know about the eating? Has Arthur told him? Surely he wouldn't?

_And what did that have to do with gay porn anyway?_

"No, I… I don't know, okay?"

"Have you thought about just talking to him?"

Gwaine sounds vaguely serious, but Arthur snorts.

"Oh yeah, and how's that conversation gonna go? 'Hi Merlin, heard you've been in love with me since forever, how's that working out for you?'"

_No._

_No, no, no._

For a moment, all Merlin can hear is a buzzing in his ears.

_This can't be happening._

He feels numb all over. How does Arthur know? How did he find out?

_Please God, let it not be true._

But it is. He heard it. And Gwaine knows too… and they're just discussing it? Like it's commonplace, like it's something they do all the time.

Like it's funny.

Merlin can't breathe properly. He staggers to his feet, barely noticing as the bench tips over behind him.

There's a noise behind him, and footsteps coming towards the door.

He sets off running.

He hears someone shouting his name behind him, but he does not, _cannot_, look back.

~III~

Ah, a terrible eavesdropping based misunderstanding, much like in popular 70s sitcom Three's Company! Seriously though, let me know what you think and thank you so so so much for reading and reviewing this fic, I am very appreciative.


	14. Lanugo

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Angsty angst

A/N: Thank you so much to Aerist, FrancesGamble-too, lovePEOPLEandCOWBOY, Sarrasponda, wholocked12, bubzchoc, helenealbra, grayember13, mersan123, and LaRiEnGuBlEr for your brilliant reviews, I'm super grateful!

Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, this chapter is not amazing. For some reason it was really difficult to write, which is why it's so delayed, but I think unfortunately this is the best it's gonna get. I want to make every chapter really good for you guys and for some reason I just couldn't get it how I wanted it this time, so I apologise.

However, the bright spot in all my shilly shallying is that I've written all of the next chapter and half of the final one while I was messing with this one, so expect those soon!

~III~

**Sap sunk**

**at eighteen, he's been old**

**for too long, always cold**

**in his matt blacks, always **

**in some kind of mourning.**

Of all the new words that Arthur has learnt lately, the one that sticks in his head is 'lanugo'. It seems weirdly exotic; perhaps because it sounds a little like lagoon. But it also makes him think of all the technical terms he learnt in English language – anapaest, trochee, dactyl. Lanugo sounds poetic, like it refers to something not quite tangible, something vague and romantic.

It's not, of course. It's the medical term for the soft downy hair that babies are sometimes born with. And also the softy downy hair that grows on the body of anorexics to compensate for the lack of fat keeping them warm.

Arthur's head is full of new words like hypokalaemia and amenorrhea and osteopenia. Words that tie up the tongue, words that look impossibly alien when written down, words with Greek and Latin roots that seem to belong to another time altogether. He cannot square them with the here and now; with the disease that is slowly breaking his friend down into little pieces.

Even 'anorexia' itself sounds wrong. Arthur looked up the Greek meaning and found that '_an_' means without and '_orexis_' means appetite. So anorexia is simply 'without appetite'. It's such an underwhelming phrase for such a terrifying ailment. 'Without appetite' seems gentle, harmless; something you might say when turning down that extra biscuit or bag of crisps. It does not equate with the horror of a person being eaten from the inside out. Arthur cannot reconcile the elegance of these words with the ugliness of their meanings. He's angry and he's got no-one to be angry with so he's going to be angry with these words that disguise their true definitions, that whitewash the cruelty they represent.

It is cruelty, he decides. It's a malicious disease, a vindictive and petty virus that latches onto a person and sucks the life out of them. And Arthur can't bear the fact that it's incorporeal; that he cannot fight it face to face, or overpower it with reason and logic. The fury inside him has nowhere to go; no way to get its revenge on this malevolent succubus that feeds on his friend. So it just sits in his stomach, churning him up inside.

He no longer believes Hunith's promise that Merlin is on the mend. He can see for himself that Merlin's getting worse, not better. No matter how baggy his long sleeved shirts, Arthur can still see the thinness of the papery wrists that poke through, still see the hollow grooves in Merlin's cheeks as he trudges from class to class with the shuffling gait of an old man.

Whatever treatment Hunith has arranged for him, it's not working. It no longer even feels like Merlin's ignoring him, now it's more like he can't hear or comprehend what Arthur says to him anyway. When teachers or other students ask him a question, Merlin just stares blankly, and gives a slight shake of his head, as though his ears are full of treacle. Arthur's convinced there are times when Merlin is completely unaware of what's going on around him. And whenever he sits next to him in the library, he notices that Merlin's revision notes are sparse and nonsensical, confirming Arthur's suspicion that he can't concentrate on what he's reading either.

It's near impossible now for Arthur to carry on the façade of chatting to Merlin like nothing's wrong. He feels exhausted, both physically and mentally, and his stomach is clenched with worry every time he looks at his friend. The silences he lapses into are longer nowadays, but again he doubts that Merlin even notices.

His other friends are trying their best to help; they know something's wrong with Merlin, even if they don't know what it is. Gwaine and Freya have put it down to exam stress (and, he suspects, the pressure of secretly liking Arthur). Lance is more circumspect on his opinions, but he often checks up on Merlin and sits with him in the library when Arthur has class.

Gwen has asked once or twice if Arthur feels he can tell her yet, and although he keeps saying no, his resolve is weakening. He's so tired of handling this all on his own; so tired of living in a constant whirl of anxiety and fear. He's got no-one to talk to; he can't tell Uther or Morgana or any of his friends, and so he has to do it all by himself. The next time Gwen asks, Arthur wonders if it all might just come out. If he had Gwen to talk to about it; calm, rational, caring Gwen, he might feel a lot better. But in doing so he'd be betraying Merlin, and Arthur's not sure he could ever be forgiven for that.

So he keeps it to himself. But he knows he's nearing breaking point himself; the strain of worrying about Merlin feels like a weight slowly pushing him into the ground.

He needs to talk to Hunith again. Privately this time, and ask her not to tell Merlin. But she needs to know that Merlin isn't improving, that the help he's getting isn't enough. That he needs a different kind of support before… before something really bad happens.

~III~

With all the stress of his life, football seems like the closest thing he gets to relaxing nowadays. This week's practice was no exception. He'd had to focus on the game, to put all his energy towards winning, and it knocked every other thought out of his head. It was good to get a break.

He's barely listening in the changing rooms after as Gwaine goes on about some insane sexting mishap he'd had with Elena last night. But then he brings up the whole gay porn thing again and Arthur ducks his head, blushing, as though Gwaine might read his guilty secret all over his face.

He's been trying hard not to think of that night (the 'disaster night', as he refers to it in his head) and worry for Merlin's health has been at the forefront of his mind since then, as opposed to further consideration of his feelings.

Thinking about it now, he's no closer to an answer. He tries to shut Gwaine down, but his friend is nothing if not persistent.

"Fine, whatever. So you got any other ways to figure out the whole Merlin thing?"

Arthur gives an honest answer for once, which is that he genuinely doesn't know. And Gwaine's response to that is irritatingly reasonable: talk to Merlin.

It's not as though he hasn't thought about that option; has even run the conversation through his head a few times. In the fantasy though, Merlin actually talks back; which may be overly optimistic considering the current state of relations between them.

But how would he even bring the topic up? He voices his frustration to Gwaine.

"Oh yeah, and how's that conversation gonna go? 'Hi Merlin, heard you've been in love with me since forever, how's that working out for you?'"

Gwaine laughs.

"Maybe something a bit more subtle, mate. I'm not saying you should-"

Gwaine breaks off in mid-sentence as a crashing noise resounds from outside. He pulls a confused face at Arthur, who shrugs and walks to the door. He sticks his head out to see the cause and for a moment he doesn't understand. The bench is on the floor and there's a dark haired figure breaking into a run. Then he realises that the dark haired figure is Merlin. Merlin who must have been sat on the bench. Merlin who must have knocked the bench over when he stood up suddenly. Merlin who must have stood up suddenly because… because he was sat under the open window and could hear everything they were saying.

Panic tears at Arthur's heart and he starts to run, ignoring the fact that his shirt is unbuttoned, and he's not wearing any shoes.

He's shouting Merlin's name frantically but Merlin doesn't look back even for a second. He's gaining on Merlin, because he's the fastest runner in the whole football team even with bare feet and Merlin currently barely has the strength to walk anywhere. But he trips suddenly on an uneven patch of grass and his ankle twists painfully as he falls. He struggles to his feet but his ankle won't take the weight when he tries to sprint again. Arthur hobbles on regardless but Merlin's reached the edge of the field now, and he crosses the road and disappears from view.

Arthur sinks down in the grass, defeated, breath coming in short gasps. He hears footsteps and Gwaine runs up behind him.

"Was that Merlin?" Gwaine says, stricken. "Did he hear?"

Arthur only has the energy to nod.

~III~

He rings Merlin repeatedly over the next two hours but he never picks up. The last time he calls, the phone's been switched off. It's then that Arthur knows he has to go round to Merlin's house, to talk to him face to face. He sets off straight away, trying desperately to think of what to say.

He should tell the truth but the truth is problematic. If he tells Merlin that their friends told him, Merlin will be angry at them. But he's not sure Merlin will believe it if he says he's just guessed on his own. His years of obliviousness don't exactly lend that story credence.

Also, even if Merlin believes him, what does he say next? It's do or die time regarding his feelings for Merlin and Arthur's still at a total loss for an answer. And the stakes seem impossibly high whatever he decides. If he says yes, I don't know how I feel but I want to find out by making it work with you, then what? Merlin's still ill, it's not like he can just kiss him and make everything all better. He doubts Merlin is physically or emotionally stable enough to handle a relationship right now.

And if he says no, I don't feel the same way, then… Rejecting Merlin when he's so far from well seems impossibly cruel. It might just break him.

Arthur doesn't know and when he knocks on Merlin's door, he decides to leave it up to fate. Let the conversation unfurl as it will and maybe the answer will come to him.

But Merlin doesn't answer the door. And Arthur doesn't think that he's hiding, there's no lights on inside and he can hear no movement.

But if Merlin's not home, then where is he?

Just like that, Arthur is scared. On any other day he might not have reacted this way but he gets the sudden, sickening feeling that it's all come to a head somehow. Everything that's happened since he picked Merlin up and carried him to the nurse's office, right up till the conversation Merlin heard today. It's all led up to this, now, Merlin missing and Arthur banging uselessly on his door.

The weird sensation passes in a moment and Arthur gets practical. He calls Hunith immediately, determines she's still at the hospital and doesn't know where Merlin is. She says she spoke to him a couple of hours before, to remind him he had an appointment with the nutritionist. She hasn't heard from him since.

He tries not to panic her. There's a million and one places Merlin could be and he might arrive home at any moment. Hunith gets off the line so that she can try and call him herself; before she goes Arthur promises to ring round all their friends. But Merlin's not with Gwaine, or Freya, or Lance. When Arthur hears he's not with Gwen either, his stomach drops. Gwen senses his distress.

"This is about before, isn't it? About something being wrong with him?"

"Yes," Arthur half-whispers.

"And now you don't know where he is?"

There's a pause on the line.

"I'll be there in ten minutes. Let's go find him."

Arthur doesn't really register how grateful he is until Gwen appears in front of him and hugs him tight. He buries his face in her neck, overwhelmed by the sudden urge to sob because everything's gone completely beyond his control now and Merlin's in trouble, he can just feel it.

"It's okay, Arthur. We'll find him. He's probably on his way home right now."

Gwen looks determinedly positive, eyes bright.

"I thought I could go downtown and look there, and you could search the parks and gardens on the west side. Lance says he'll drive out to check the coach station, and I asked Elyan to park here and wait in case he comes home."

Arthur squeezes her hand in gratitude, not able to say how much it means that she's here and he doesn't have to do this on his own.

They part, agreeing to keep in contact by mobile and check in regularly. Arthur rings Hunith again to tell her but the line's engaged so he leaves a message. He sets out to St Andrew's fields first because Merlin likes to go walking there and it's possible he's taking a night-time stroll.

He tries not to think about the other possibilities, like Merlin collapsing in the field and lying there alone, getting colder and colder as the evening wears on…

He's letting his imagination run away with him. Merlin's barely been gone for three hours, it's far too early to assume the worst. And yet he can't get that strange, ominous feeling inside him to dissipate. It feels like something cold's trickling down the back of his neck, and there's a hard stone of dread in the pit of his stomach.

He types out a quick text to Merlin, even though he knows his phone is switched off.

'_Where are you? Please come back home and let me explain everything'_

An hour later he sends:

'_Come home Merlin. We're all worried sick about you.'_

Then, an hour later:

'_Please come home. I love you.' _

An hour after that, Arthur's phone rings. It's Hunith.

They've found Merlin.


	15. To Cease Upon the Midnight With No Pain

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: All previous warnings apply, you can see a (spoilery) warning at the end if you want to know before you read.

A/N: Thank you so much to Aerist, Alicia Roth, wholocked12, Sarrasponda, Lightning Lily, LaRiEnGuBlEr, mersan123, DrarrySmurf, bubzchoc, lovePEOPLEandCOWBOY, FrancesGamble-too, grayember13 and Alex J oker for your fantabulous reviews. It's so great to hear from you and I love all your opinions on what should happen!

~III~

**Co-ordination**

**slipping now, caught out –**

**fraud, fraud! – **

**he plays the cheapest trick of all.**

Merlin can hear Arthur shouting behind him but he doesn't care, he's running and running and he can't stop for anything. Halfway across the field he senses Arthur's gaining on him but then the footsteps falter and he sprints on, widening the gap between them. By the time he's crossed the road, he knows Arthur's given up.

Merlin carries on running, forcing himself not to think, to concentrate solely on the pounding of his trainers on the pavement. He runs until there's no breath left in his body, runs until he reaches the outskirts of St Andrew's fields and then he collapses on the ground. For a moment or two he blacks out but then a wave of nausea overtakes him and he rolls over to be sick. But there's nothing in his stomach to come up so it's only dry retches that tear painfully at the back of his throat.

When he's finished, he turns onto his back, listening to his breath coming in short, harsh pants.

He can't block it out anymore.

Arthur knows.

Questions of who and how and why fly round his head but they're not really important. All that matters is that Arthur knows and now it's all over.

His brain won't stop replaying the words he overheard, a repeat that gets more ugly and distorted every time. It makes his head ache.

_(hey merlin)_

_(heard you've been in love with me since forever) _

_(how's that working out for you?)_

Has Arthur known this whole time? Is that why he's been trying to help Merlin? Out of pity? The thought makes him sick. Arthur feeling some twisted sense of responsibility to his poor gay friend with the tragic crush on him…

He thought Gwaine and Arthur might be laughing at him, but the truth seems much worse: they were feeling sorry for him. Shaking their heads at how pathetic he is; to nurse a secret love for his straight best friend.

Arthur sounded embarrassed when Gwaine was questioning him. It's probably humiliating for him, to discover that Merlin fancies him. Probably makes his skin crawl. But he's too good a person to just turn his back on a friend so he's tried to stick by Merlin, even though the thought of being near him doubtless repulses him.

Merlin feels like crying but his eyes are dry, there's nothing left inside him.

_How can he ever face Arthur again?_

He can't. He won't.

He lies there for a while, listening to the whispering in the trees around him, feeling his eyes prickle and sting without ever giving way to tears.

When his phone suddenly buzzes in his pocket, he jolts in shock.

He shouldn't be surprised, it's been vibrating on and off since he started running but he's ignored all of Arthur's calls. But this time when he pulls it out to hit reject, he finds it's his mother calling instead.

"Hey Mum," he says carefully, trying to sound normal.

"Hello love, how are you?"

"Fine," Merlin says.

"I was just ringing to check if you've remembered you've got the nutritionist at 5.50."

Shit. He'd forgotten.

"No worries, Mum, I'll be there," he says quickly.

"I can't join you, but I'll be home at about eight for dinner. How does spag bol sound?"

"Great."

There's a slight pause, in which Merlin can almost hear all the things his mum wants to say to him. But she only sighs softly.

"Okay love, see you then."

"Bye," he says and hangs up, checking the time on his phone as he does.

It's half past five now. The hospital's only ten minutes away, he can make it in time, but he'll have to leave now if he wants to buy a litre of water from Tesco on the way.

~III~

Merlin's far too preoccupied with Arthur to be nervous about seeing the nutritionist, but he's in for a shock when he arrives at the office. Straggly bearded guy isn't there, instead there's a smart looking man of about forty sat behind the desk.

"Merlin, isn't it? Come on in."

"Where's-" Merlin starts and then realises he can't even remember the other guy's name.

"Dr Rickle is on annual leave so I'm taking over his patients for a while," the man says, smiling. "You can call me Paul."

Merlin nods, discomfited. "Paul" already seems a lot more engaged and focused than Merlin would like.

"If you want to just pop up on the scales for me."

Merlin does and watches as Paul scrutinises the digital display.

"Would you mind doing me a favour Merlin?" he asks pleasantly. "Would you mind just using the toilet in there? We find we get a more accurate reading if patients are weighed on an empty bladder."

Merlin's pulse speeds up.

_God, he knows. _

"I, er, I don't need to go right now," he stammers.

"If you'd just humour me," Paul says lightly, gesturing to the bathroom door in the corner of the room.

"I went before I came," Merlin says, trying to sound nonchalant.

Paul doesn't bat an eyelid.

"Well you're my last appointment of the day, so I suppose we could wait around a while until you're ready to go."

It's no use. Merlin's bladder is already screaming for relief, he doubts he'll make it five minutes, let alone the time Paul's prepared to wait.

He knows when he's beaten. He trudges off to the bathroom and then mounts the scales like a man mounting a scaffold.

Paul makes a note of the new number, and then directs Merlin to have a seat. His voice is gentle.

"Okay Merlin, so looking at your weight now compared to when you first came in, I'm afraid there's actually been a decrease. Considering you were underweight when you were first referred to us, this is quite a worry."

"Dr Rickle said I put on weight," Merlin says.

"I suspect that may have been down to excess water weight," Paul says evenly. There's no accusation in his tone but Merlin feels it anyway.

"Okay, well, I guess the diet plan's not working then," he says defensively.

"I think maybe the problem is not with the plan, but with it not being properly followed," Paul says quietly.

Merlin opens his mouth in denial but Paul holds a hand up.

"Merlin, let me speak frankly. You are dangerously underweight. You're currently highly susceptible to infections and viruses, as well as a host of serious health issues that accompany a BMI as low as yours. If you continue to lose weight, you will be at risk of collapse, heart failure, and possibly even death."

Merlin feels a sort of sharp fear tugging at him as Paul's words sink in, but it doesn't overwhelm him. There's a distance between the words and him; he can't quite see how they fit together. It's like Paul's talking about someone else altogether.

He looks up as the man continues.

"I'd like to suggest that you take up a place at the retreat centre for a while. I understand that you're currently seeing a therapist there, and I think it would be highly beneficial if you went to stay for a while to receive some treatment."

Merlin can't make sense of it for a moment. They want to lock him up? Like in a mental institution?

"I don't need treatment," he says loudly.

"Merlin, please understand that you are in very poor health-"

"You can't make me go," Merlin says. "I'm eighteen. I'm an adult."

Paul looks very tired all of a sudden.

"That's true. But under the Mental Health Act of 1983, you can be detained in hospital if we believe there is sufficient risk to your life."

Merlin gapes.

"Detained? You can't do this. You can't lock me up!"

"No-one wants to lock you up, Merlin. The retreat isn't some kind of prison; it's a place to get better. And I want you to agree to try it out."

"Otherwise you'll make me."

"I don't want to make you. I don't want to get the law involved. I want you to make this decision yourself."

The fear that was tugging at Merlin before slams into him like a freight train. This is actually going to happen. They're actually going shut him away. Shut him away and watch him and force feed him and never leave him alone.

Raw panic is clawing at Merlin's throat. He feels like he might start hyperventilating right there and then, his heart skittering in his chest.

But then a voice cuts through the fog in his mind, calm and clear.

_Keep it together. If you lose it now, they'll drag you there in a straitjacket. You have to pretend to play along._

Merlin takes one deep breath, then another.

"Okay," he says at last, when he trusts himself to speak. "I'll give it a try."

"You will?" Paul looks cautiously optimistic.

"Yeah. I want to… get better."

"Good," Paul says encouragingly. "That's really great, Merlin. I'll make the call right now."

Merlin sits in silence through the phone call. He tunes out the words, desperately trying to formulate a plan.

When Paul rings off, he looks at Merlin.

"That's all sorted then. Do I also have your permission to call your mum, let her know what you've decided?"

Merlin nods.

"Lovely. She can come and take you home to collect your bits and bobs to take to the centre, then we can all go there together."

Paul must notice Merlin's sickly expression because he leans forward, a reassuring smile on his face.

"There's no need to be worried. The retreat's a wonderful place and they've helped a lot of people like you."

He looks around his desk.

"I think I have a leaflet about it somewhere round here, hang on."

He searches through his drawers for a few seconds.

"It must be next door, just a tick."

Paul opens the door connecting his surgery with the next one and leans in.

"Julie, trust you to still be here. I was just wondering…"

The rest of his words are muffled as he leans further into the other room and Merlin realises he's not going to get another chance.

As quietly as possible, he gets to his feet and slips out of the door.

Then, for the second time that day, he runs.

~III~

He slows to a walk only when he's well clear of the hospital.

There are spots in his line of vision, and he collapses onto a bench, exhausted.

Where now?

He can't go home. They'll be waiting for him there.

Can't go to a friend's, they'll turn him in.

Can't go anywhere. There's nowhere safe to go. Wherever he tries to hide, they'll find him eventually and drag him away to that place to pry inside his brain, to make him eat whatever they want and lock the door on him at night.

And then what? Say they let him out one day. What will he do then? He'll have missed his A-Levels. He'll have to go back and repeat a year, if they let him back at all. And his friends will all be gone, to university or jobs, making successes of their lives while he's stuck treading water in the same place. Stuck feeling the same way he always did.

And Arthur.

He can never see Arthur again. All the future holds for him is the bleak certainty of having loved and having lost. There's nothing else to go on for.

It seems like it should be bigger realisation than it is, like a thunder clap should sound or a fork of lightning rend the sky. But it feels entirely undramatic; simply like coming to a long expected conclusion.

There are no longer any doubts. It's the end of the line.

He knows where to go now. He gets off the bench and his feet lead the way.

~III~

It takes far too long to find the medicine aisle in the supermarket. But he gets there, and grabs two packets of paracetamol, both 32 tablets. He figures that's more than enough. He read somewhere that if you take too many too quickly, you throw them up before they ever hit your liver and start to do anything. He'd take barbiturates or something stronger if he could get his hands on them, but this is all he has so he'll have to make do.

The young cashier smiles apologetically when he puts the packets down on the conveyer belt.

"Sorry, you can only buy one of those at a time."

"Why?" Merlin says automatically and then has to restrain himself from collapsing in hysterical laughter because he knows why, it's for the exact reason he wants them.

The girl shrugs.

"It's a rule."

Merlin just stands there for a moment, unsure of what to do. He can go elsewhere, the Tesco on Oakland might be open but it's a long walk away-

"Oh, I'll just put them through as two transactions," the girl says suddenly, smiling conspiratorially at him. "Stupid rule, anyway."

And she does. Merlin feels like it's the closest thing to a sign that he's going to get.

He buys vodka at the liquor store next door, because he knows it'll help things along. Then as an after-thought, a pint of milk from the all night garage, remembering something he saw on TV once.

He's got everything he needs now; the only other factor is time. If they get him to a hospital within a few hours, they could bring him back and he doesn't want that. That's why he's not going back to the house for his mother to find him and call an ambulance. There's a park a few streets away that gets locked at night, he's going there. No-one will find him till morning and by then it should be too late. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, he doubts it could be used to track him but he doesn't want to take any chances. He looks at the missed calls list one last time, then switches it off.

He stumbles blindly past the entrance to the park, and slips round the back, away from the main road. Once there, he holds his bag of supplies between his teeth, and climbs over the ivy covered wall. It's not easy, especially in his weakened state, but he manages.

Inside, he heads straight to the middle of the park. A few years ago, a town committee built a tribute to Alice in Wonderland there for the kids. It's a sort of hidden den under a huge oak tree, with painted figures of the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat inside. At the back there's a large stone slab with a passage from the book inscribed on it.

Officially, he was too old by the time the tribute was built to play in it, but Merlin's always loved it. The structure has something of the secretive nature of childhood in it; inviting and enigmatic.

Merlin sits down on the slab and lays his supplies out beside him.

He drinks the milk first, to line his stomach.

Then he begins to take the pills, one by one, each with a swig of vodka.

It's beginning to rain but the branches above him protect him from the worst of it. The odd drop slips through and lands on his head, trickles down his face like a tear, the one that he can't shed.

When the last pill is gone, he drinks the rest of the vodka and lays the bottle down on the grass. Stares out into the gloom.

He wants… He doesn't know what he wants. Maybe someone to tell him that it's not really like this, that this isn't all there is.

But it is like this. This is what it's like. There's nothing more than this now, just the slow beat of his heart as he lies down on his side, the steady drip of rain on the leaves above him.

The end of a long day, that's what it feels like. He's been tired all his life, always one step behind, always missing something. Like a boy in a fairy-tale, cursed not with a grotesque face, but an unlovely mind. A mind that wants to eat him from the inside out. A mind that acts like a cancer cell, destroying everything around it.

He's lived a long time with poison in his brain.

It's enough now, he thinks. It's more than enough.

And he doesn't feel cold anymore, for the first time in months. He turns onto his back so he can see the sky filtering through the branches above him. It's a clear night, with a handful of stars dotted around.

He loves stars. He remembers camping with his mum when he was little, being allowed to stay up late to look up at the sky and listen while she pointed out the constellations and told the stories behind them.

He's getting tired now, his eyes are closing of their own accord, but he wants to keep them open for as long as possible, wants to count all the stars in the sky.

There's Draco, and Arcturus, and Cassiopeia. What was the story of Cassiopeia again? She was beautiful and vain, and so was tied to a chair and frozen in the heavens for all eternity… Cruel, the way most myths are.

He thinks of Arthur. If life was a Greek myth, Arthur would be one of the boy heroes; a Perseus or a Theseus. He'd do great deeds of bravery and cunning, and when he died the gods would cast him up into the stars, so he'd always be remembered.

Merlin knows he won't be remembered long. But he hopes Arthur won't forget him. Now he's truly at the end, he almost feels glad that Arthur knows the truth.

Let him always remember that someone loved him.

That Merlin loved him.

He can't really keep his eyes open any more so he lets them drift shut. He feels a kind of numbness spreading up his body but he's not in any pain not anymore.

He thinks of his mum. And Arthur, always Arthur.

Then he lets go.

**A toothmug of tap water,**

**sixty paracetamol.**

**He tries hissing himself offstage.**

~III~

Warning for suicide.

Edit: Guys listen, over on AO3, a commenter made a very good point that suicide by overdose is an incredibly painful way to go and Merlin wouldn't just slip away like that. She/he is absolutely right and I feel irresponsible to have shown it in that way. Anyway I don't know if I should edit this chapter to delete the suicide scene because I'm scared I glamourised it when in fact it's just an awful thing. Please, if anyone's reading this, it's just a story and it's not meant to be real at all. Let me know if you want this chapter changed.


	16. This

Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.

Warnings: Bit o' language, hospitals, angst, discussion of suicide

A/N: I'm so sorry again for the delay. As I mentioned in the end note to the last chapter, it was brought to my attention that the way I depicted the suicide scene was problematic. I had a bit of a freak out and couldn't figure out what to do, hence the delay. But I decided to leave the scene as it is and hope it can be read as an example of artistic license and not as scientific fact.

I originally wrote a scene in this chapter about the pain Merlin experienced but deleted it as it didn't fit. But suffice to say, suicide in this manner is painful and can have long term serious health effects for survivors.

Ultimately this is a story, and while I have tried to make some bits realistic, other bits are pure melodrama/contrivance (Merlin overhearing that conversation, anyone?). So it's not realism and I hope no-one takes it as such. But I want to deeply apologise to anyone who was distressed or felt triggered, it was not my intention.

Thank you so so much to April29Roses, Alicia Roth, jessieklove, wholocked12, FrancesGamble-too, Sarrasponda, bubzchoc, WhatIsThisNormalYouSpeakOf, mersan123, Aerist, LaRiEnGuBlEr, Wisegirl6, FanfictionHopper, lovePEOPLEandCOWBOY, Guest, ggff-1000, Jayfire, and I Am SuperWhoMerVengLocked. Your responses were incredibly helpful and I really love you all!

Anyway, massive author's note aside, I really hope you enjoy this final chapter. It's not a perfect ending and I'm sure there might be things missing you wanted to see resolved, or ways you might have wanted it to be different but I hope you can enjoy it for what it is :)

~III~

**Drip. Drip.**

**Those stripped**

**twigs of his fingers.**

**Ivy torsions in the wrist.**

**Two spikes bandaged**

**to drip in his veins. **

It wasn't any of them who found Merlin in the end. It was a homeless man who broke into the park to take shelter from the rain. He was the one to find the shaking, vomiting boy underneath the oak tree. He was the one to see the vodka bottle and the empty pill packets scattered around. He was the one to take the boy's phone and call the ambulance.

Arthur doesn't find all of this out until later. He learns it from a nurse, who heard it from the paramedic who arrived on the scene. The homeless man declined to ride to the hospital and didn't provide a name. So Arthur has no way of tracking him down to say all the things he wants to say in his undying, eternal gratitude.

But he's not aware of any of this when Hunith first calls him. All he knows is that Merlin is in hospital and Hunith doesn't know why yet.

His car's still parked at Merlin's house, much too far away, so he simply runs to the hospital, putting everything he has into getting there as fast as possible.

Hunith's already pacing the waiting room when he arrives and they embrace briefly, holding each other tightly.

"Where is he? What happened? Is he okay?" Arthur gasps out desperately.

Hunith doesn't know. They're working on Merlin right now and no-one's allowed in. He understands why but it still enrages him; every fibre of his being is itching to storm into the room and see for himself, to check that Merlin is still here, still breathing, still alive…

But he can't. So they wait. A nurse comes out every so often to update them on the progress. The second time, they beg her to tell them what happened.

She's very gentle when she says it seems Merlin has overdosed on paracetamol.

"On purpose?" Hunith says, voice rising in hysteria. "On purpose?"

"I'm afraid we don't know for sure yet," the nurse says sympathetically.

Which Arthur knows is a lie of course, because paracetamol isn't like heroin, you don't accidentally take enough to overdose.

You only do it when you want to die.

The realisation hits Arthur like a sledgehammer to the stomach and he almost loses his footing as his knees go weak.

Hunith's clearly come to the same conclusion as him because there's a moment's silence and then she throws up. Not moving at all, not even turning her head to the side, she just vomits all over herself.

"Oh dear," the nurse says, springing straight into action. "Let's get you cleaned up."

Arthur watches helplessly as the nurse leads Hunith away. He wants to follow but he feels rooted to the spot, like he'll fall the minute he tries to move.

He stays like that for a while and then he feels a strong arm around his shoulders, and lets himself be steered to sit on one of the plastic chairs.

"Let's get you sat down, son," a calm voice says and he looks up to see a porter, about fifty years old, with a kind, crinkly face.

"You stay put and I'll get you a hot drink," the man says and walks over to the machine in the corner. He returns with a plastic cup of tea.

"Strong and sweet. Get that down you."

He pushes the drink into Arthur's unresisting hand, and Arthur takes a sip. It's much more sugary than he normally likes it but he drinks it obediently. If he does what he's told, if he just sits there and prays with every part of him, then surely Merlin will be alright…

"Better?" the porter asks when he's drained the cup.

Arthur nods. He does feel slightly less shaky, less likely to pass out.

"My friend-" he says and then stops, because his voice sounds all funny. He clears his throat and tries again. "My friend, he-"

But he can't get the rest of the sentence out.

"In there, is he?" the man says, gesturing towards the rooms. "They'll be taking good care of him. I may be biased, but I like to think we've got the best doctors in the country here."

Arthur nods, and the porter squeezes his shoulder.

"Got to get back to work. Get yourself another drink if you feel wobbly. I'm sure someone'll be along to update you as soon as they can."

He smiles again and walks off. Then Arthur's on his own again.

It seems like an age before the nurse from before returns, Hunith beside her; now wearing a blue scrub top.

"She's okay," the nurse says to Arthur. "Just a bit of a shock."

The colour has completely drained out of Hunith's face, her eyes look like black hollows set against her whey skin.

"Any news on…" Arthur asks, words failing him again.

"I'll go and find out for you," the nurse says kindly, and takes off.

Arthur helps Hunith into a seat, and offers her a drink, which she declines.

They sit, hand in hand.

Then the doctor comes.

"Mrs Emrys?" she says and Hunith stands, Arthur right behind her.

"I'm happy to report your son's condition has stabilised."

Arthur can't quite take it in.

"He's out of the woods for tonight, but I'm afraid we won't know if he's sustained any permanent damage to his liver for at least twenty four hours. We'll also have to run more tests on-"

Hunith's interrupts, her voice high.

"But he's- he's not going to-"

"No, he's not going to die," the doctor says reassuringly.

This time Arthur's legs really do give out and he sits back down with a thump.

He's never felt relief like this before, coursing through every vein and artery, his whole body trembling with the power of it.

Merlin's alive. He's not going to die. He's alive.

"Can we see him?" Hunith says, her voice sounding a little stronger.

"I'm afraid only you can. Family only right now," the doctor says, casting a sympathetic look at Arthur.

He nods and tries not to mind. He's not even sure he's emotionally ready to see Merlin right now.

But at the same time he longs to, not sure he can believe what the doctor says until he sees Merlin with his own two eyes.

It must show on his face, because after the doctor's taken Hunith, she returns.

"I'm afraid I can't break the rules and let you in. But if you want a very quick look through the window, I think I can turn a blind eye."

Arthur tries to smile in gratitude, although he's not sure the muscles in his face are working properly.

He follows her down a corridor till they reach a room right on the end. The blinds to the windows are open and he approaches slowly.

He's scared of what he's about to see.

But when he peeps through the window, it's not as bad as he thought. Hunith is sat by the bed, her back to him, and lying next to her is…

He looks white. Except for a bruise on the side of his temple, just under his hairline. Other than that, he could almost be sleeping, except for the tubes in his nose, the IV spidering from his arm.

His eyes are closed but Arthur can just about make out the slow up and down of his chest.

And he's crying now, for the first time since he arrived at the hospital, tears streaming down his face.

Merlin tried to kill himself.

He hated life so much he wanted to die.

The tears have turned to sobs, his whole body is shaking, and he's only dimly aware of the doctor leading him away, back to the waiting room. Someone takes his mobile from his pocket, makes a call. He doesn't look up, doesn't say anything.

The world only comes back into focus when his father is standing there in front of him, and Arthur walks right into his outstretched arms, clinging to him like a child.

**Mulched like leafmould,**

**mushroom-breathed, shit smelling,**

**he's a question: Can **

**you love this?**

**Can you sit**

**and watch the hours dissolving**

**in the drip**

**of Parvolax and glucose**

**clear as rinsings from bare twig tips**

**when the downpour's gone?**

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Arthur drives to the retreat after work to visit Merlin.

He managed to scrape the required grades at A-Level to get into his chosen university, but he defers his place for a year. He asks Uther for an internship at Pendragon Industries instead. It takes a while to talk his father round but Arthur manages to persuade him on the grounds that a year of first hand practical experience could only be a boon to his Business degree.

They both know that's not why he wants to defer, but Uther is gracious enough to pretend otherwise.

He works the early shift, from 8 till 4.30, so he can drive to the retreat in time for visiting hours from 5 till 7. The work is mainly dull, filing and envelope stuffing and data entry, but Uther promises he'll be given more responsibility soon.

Arthur doesn't mind. Work is not his priority right now.

Some days when he arrives at the centre, Merlin is sat in a chair reading, or on a computer in the rec room. Those are the good days, when they can go for a walk together or play Xbox or talk about Arthur's evil line manager and how he's running him ragged.

Then there are the bad days, when Merlin won't get out of bed and spends the visit staring out of the window as though Arthur isn't there. Or when he's sat in the garden, fists clenched as he tears up pieces of grass and spits insults at Arthur for leaving him locked up here to be force fed and head shrunk.

Arthur hates those days, though not as much as he hates the rare occasions when he finds Merlin crying, great big sobs wracking his body like he's unable to stop, like he never will.

On the silent days he can chat away to Merlin like nothing's wrong, almost a re-tread of their estranged period at school. On the angry days, he can stand firm and take the insults, never disagreeing or arguing back, until Merlin wears himself out and ends up apologising, guilt ridden and tired.

But on the crying days he can only hold Merlin, rub his back or pull him into an embrace and let him weep inconsolably into Arthur's shoulder. Those days break his heart.

Their other friends come by too. They're all around for the summer, before September comes and their new lives begin. Gwaine ends up at Manchester Met, which isn't too far, and he drives to see Merlin most weekends. Freya takes a baking apprenticeship one town over and she can visit quite often. Gwen and Lance both chose to go to Edinburgh, the furthest afield of all of them, but they faithfully travel down together every second weekend.

Gwaine finds it the hardest, Arthur thinks. His main defence in life is humour but there's not much call for that around Merlin anymore. If Merlin's in a good mood, Gwaine's shenanigans can perk him right up. But when Merlin's in a bad mood, Gwaine doesn't know what to do. Arthur watches him stand at the side of the bed or the chair or the garden bench, twisting his hands together, a lost expression on his face.

Arthur tells him it's okay to feel helpless but Gwaine looks ashamed all the same.

Gwen and Freya are much better, both a little more able to take it in their stride. Gwen is especially good when Merlin's angry, sitting next to him and talking to him in a low soothing voice until the tension dissolves from his body. Freya comes the most often after Arthur and makes herself a favourite among the staff by bringing along the fruits of her baking labours – mainly delicious cakes and pies that she happily shares. It's a bit of an ironic boon in a treatment centre for eating disorders, but sometimes even Merlin will try a corner of a biscuit or half a fairy bun.

The real surprise is Lance though. Of all of them, including Arthur, Lance is the one who has the most calming effect on Merlin. He doesn't even have to talk much; he seems to exude a kind of peacefulness that Merlin somehow responds to. Once, on one of Merlin's crying days, Arthur has to leave the room for some fresh air, and when he comes back ten minutes later Merlin's tucked into the curve of Lance's arm and he's actually smiling.

Arthur could almost be jealous of Lance's way with Merlin, but how could he ever be jealous of something that makes Merlin feel better?

Hunith tends to visit on alternative days to Arthur, so that they don't overwhelm Merlin but he goes to her house about once a week to cook her dinner. She's exhausted, with no choice but to keep working when she'd clearly rather been spending more time with her son. But she's got the same steely resolve that he thinks must have got her through years of struggle as a single parent with an absent husband, and she believes in Merlin's recovery.

Arthur does too, some days.

The eating is certainly better. Merlin still looks a long way from well, but his bones are no longer painfully jutting from his skin, his face has lost that shrunken, emaciated look. The specialists are working with him on his diet, trying to provide him with meals he likes, building them up every week. Arthur knows that there's no room for cheating here, a fact that infuriates Merlin sometimes when he's ranting about the counsellors.

He's still too thin but he's slowly gaining weight, and Arthur knows his health isn't currently at risk.

He also knows Merlin can't stay in the retreat forever, and who's to stop him losing it all again when he gets out?

But there's no point in thinking like that. He's seeing a counsellor himself, something Morgana recommended when she came home for the summer holidays. For the first time in a long time, they've been able to talk to each other the way they did when they were younger. Morgana sat and listened as Arthur explained everything that had happened with Merlin, and when he finished, she had hugged him for a long time. Since then, they've talked almost nightly and Arthur's surprised at how helpful it's been.

One night Morgana tells him she's been seeing a counsellor at the university.

"After what happened," she says and Arthur flinches, "I was so… angry. And miserable, and confused, and lonely. I pushed it all down inside and of course it came out in awful ways; you remember all the fights I had with Dad. And then it got a bit better, and I came to Brighton, but it wasn't until this year that I really realised I needed some help."

"Has it?" Arthur asks. "Helped?"

"Yeah. A lot. Don't get me wrong, it's really hard and sometimes I don't want to go there and be so honest about everything. But just having someone to talk it all out with… it's been really good."

Morgana smiles at him.

"Merlin can get better too, you know. I know he seems a long way from it now, but it is possible."

Arthur nods, choked up.

He wants to believe it, so badly…

"You should think about seeing someone."

"Me?" Arthur says in surprise. "I'm not ill."

"No, but you're under an insane amount of stress and have been for a long time now. You've taken this all on yourself and you were brave to do it, but it's an incredible strain. I think it could help to have someone to talk to."

Arthur isn't sure. He's pretty certain Uther won't go for it either. But Morgana always has played dirty so she brings it up over dinner the next night, violating their long standing implicit agreement to avoid serious topics in casual conversation.

Arthur tenses and waits for Uther to shut her down, or simply ignore her. But to his shock, Uther puts down his fork and nods.

"If that's what Arthur wants, I think it's a good idea. I'd be glad to pay for some sessions."

Arthur has to remind himself not to gape.

"You don't have to…"

Uther looks weary all of a sudden.

"I would pay any price in the world for you to be happy. Both of you."

There's a lump in Arthur's throat and Morgana looks equally as touched.

Nothing more is said on the subject, but the atmosphere in the house changes slightly after that. Conversation flows a little more freely. Arthur feels able to bring Merlin up every so often, and Uther listens attentively when he does. His father also starts spending more time with them in the evenings, coming to watch whatever's on TV, and once even participating in a Mario Kart tournament (Morgana wipes the floor with both of them). Sometimes when Arthur gets home from the retreat, he can hear Morgana and Uther talking in the kitchen as they prepare dinner, animated discussion punctuated by laughter.

He's amazed at how good it makes him feel.

Accepting Uther's generous offer, he begins seeing a therapist. A plump bald man by the name of Glenn whose shelves are messily stacked with hundreds of books. Arthur surprises himself by finding he has a lot to say. It's mostly Merlin but with other bits mixed in, Morgana and his father, his relationship with Gwen, never knowing his mother…

Glenn listens patiently and Arthur realises it's liberating to be able to speak to someone impartial, to say whatever he wants without having to filter. He's able to tell Glenn how in amongst all his sadness for Merlin, he's furious too, that Merlin thought he could just leave like that, without so much as a goodbye. He tells Glenn that some days he doesn't want to see Merlin, and his heart is heavy on the drive to the retreat, for fear of what mood he'll find his friend in. Then there are times when he spends the whole day counting down the clock till visiting time, desperate to reassure himself that Merlin's still there, still alive and recovering.

He even manages to talk about the one thing he can't tell anyone else. His feelings for Merlin.

Arthur remembers texting Merlin to tell him that he loved him. He also remembers feeling it was entirely true at that time.

But Merlin's phone never made it to the hospital, so he never read the text.

And now…

The only thing he knows for certain is that Merlin is the most important person in his life. The centre of his universe. He can't live without him and he had nearly had to.

But what did that mean? Was prizing someone above all else the same as love?

He doesn't know. But the force of his own feeling, whatever it is, scares him sometimes.

It's much deeper than what he felt for Gwen, than what he ever felt for any girl before. It's an urge to protect, an urge to keep Merlin safe. But also to take care of him, to make him smile and wipe away his tears and always keep him close.

Glenn says not to get worked up about it. Glenn says that Merlin probably isn't in a position to think about a relationship right now anyway, so Arthur has plenty of time to figure it out.

Glenn tells him that whatever he decides, it'll be okay.

Arthur tries very hard to believe that.

**They're trying to wash the river**

**in his blood. They're on the phone**

**to the Poisons Unit:**

**the readings aren't clear. **

The bad days, when they come, are still bad; but Arthur notices they're becoming fewer and further in between. More often, Merlin will be sat in his room reading, or chatting with the other residents. He asked Hunith to bring him some A-Level textbooks at some point, though nothing official's been said about Merlin taking them this year. Hunith told Arthur it was possible though, she contacted the school and they would be happy to let him come back for the exams.

Arthur takes it as a very good sign that Merlin's re-engaging with his school work. He starts bringing Merlin fiction books too – it's not Arthur's specialist subject but Morgana helps him pick out the ones she thinks Merlin will like. Her taste is good and Merlin will often rave enthusiastically about her latest pick when Arthur visits.

It's difficult to spot when Arthur sees him so often, but he realises Merlin's looking better. He's now only slightly underweight, looking almost like he did a couple of years ago. He seems less resistant to the diet plan as well, and it's not unknown for him to eat a whole slice of cake or pie when Freya comes by.

Arthur knows it's too soon to celebrate. Anorexics relapse and he's not naïve enough to think Merlin can eat a few cinnamon rolls and be completely cured. But Glenn tells him it's okay to be hopeful.

"It'll be a rocky road ahead for your friend. But people do recover and there's no reason why he shouldn't be one of them."

Merlin leaves the retreat at the end of October. Hunith has no car so Arthur drives her there, and they pack Merlin's stuff into the boot.

It's by no means the last Merlin will be seeing of the retreat. He'll still be having three sessions a week there, and his health will continue to be monitored. He'll also be continuing to take SSRIs to help treat his depression. But he's been deemed well enough to go home and Arthur allows himself to be happy about it.

Merlin's smiling now as he says goodbye to the doctors and the other residents. He looks nervous and excited at the same time, and as they walk out to the car he drinks the outside world in.

Hunith tells him to sit upfront with Arthur and he does. Arthur can barely concentrate on the road; he keeps sneaking glances at Merlin, at all the emotions crossing over his face.

He looks giddy, then pensive, then finally sad as they drive through the centre of town.

It's the day before Halloween and there are decorations on the high street.

"Are you doing anything for tomorrow?" Merlin asks suddenly, breaking the silence in the car.

"Just staying in and trying to prevent Uther from scaring any kids who come to the door," Arthur says lightly.

"Hmm," Merlin says after a while.

Then he adds, so quietly that Hunith can't hear him.

"I was going to dress up as a skeleton but it might be a little bit too on the nose."

Arthur's not sure if he heard him right, because that'd be a sick joke indeed. But he looks at Merlin and there's a wicked glint in his friend's eye, his lips upturning at the corners.

Arthur stares for a moment before bursting out laughing. It's such a Merlin joke, dark and twisted. But it's the first one he's made in months and Arthur can't help but think it's a good thing.

**Nothing's perfect,**

**but it's all there is.**

Arthur helps Merlin unpack while Hunith cooks them all dinner. There's a tense moment when they first sit down, but Merlin eats steadily and finishes most of what's on his plate.

Arthur wonders how long it'll take before they can watch Merlin eat without worrying. Maybe it'll never happen.

It's past ten when Merlin starts yawning and Hunith insists on bed. Arthur accompanies him into his room to say goodbye.

Merlin sits on the bed, fiddling with a hole in his jeans.

"It's good to have you home," Arthur says, which is true and also the least he can say when he wants to say so much more.

Merlin nods.

"Good to be home."

Arthur clears his throat.

"Er, so I was thinking tomorrow we could do a Halloween movie marathon? Morgana had a horror phase when she was sixteen, she's pretty much got the lot."

"Yeah, that'd be good."

The silence hangs between them.

"Well, I should-" Arthur starts to say just as Merlin blurts out "D'you want to stay the night?"

He immediately goes red, and starts fiddling with his jeans again.

"I mean, for old time's sake. If you want."

"Yeah. Yeah definitely."

Merlin smiles briefly and Arthur grins back.

"Let me just call my dad."

When he returns, Merlin's already in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms, teeth brushed.

"I think there's a spare toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet," he says.

"Can I just use yours?" Arthur says cheekily and is rewarded with a cry of disgust.

"Gross! Keep your filthy mouth away from my toothbrush, Pendragon."

Arthur laughs and brushes his teeth quickly. He strips down to his t-shirt and boxers and says goodnight to Hunith before going back to Merlin's room. The main light's off and the lamp beside the bed is on, bathing the room in an amber glow.

Merlin's perched on the edge of the bed, staring into space. It reminds Arthur of the times he did that in the retreat.

He sits down next to him.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I just… it all looks the same. I feel like it should have changed somehow."

"I know," Arthur says softly.

They sit in silence for a while.

"We never talked about…" Merlin's voice is low. "We never talked about that day. When I… overheard you."

Arthur's heart begins to race and he turns straight to Merlin.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry. I never meant for you to hear that in a million years. When I realised you were there it was the worst… the worst…"

"No, don't apologise. I only wanted to know… I mean… did you just work it out? Or did someone tell you, or…"

Merlin's looking intently at his lap.

"Our friends had guessed," Arthur admits, because he doesn't want there to be any more lies. "They were worried I was behaving badly towards you and they just let it slip."

Merlin sighs.

"Okay. Fair enough. I mean it's school, secrets have a way of coming out."

"I only found out a couple of weeks before you overheard us. And I'd only been talking with Gwaine about it, I swear. We weren't all talking behind your back or anything."

Merlin snorts softly.

"Gwaine's a bit of an odd choice to confide in."

"Yeah, I know," Arthur says. "Sorry."

Merlin nods and there's an air of finality about it. Arthur senses he's not going to say anymore. So Arthur's off the hook.

But he doesn't want to be off the hook all of a sudden.

A sense of clarity is spreading through his mind, telling him exactly what he should say.

He doesn't know why, and it's not as though the evening Merlin comes home is the best time to do it, but he feels like it might be now or never.

"I was talking to Gwaine," Arthur says strongly, hoping his voice doesn't shake, "because I was trying to figure out how I felt about you in return."

Merlin starts at that.

There's a pause.

"Is that why you were talking about gay porn?" Merlin says unsteadily

"Yeah," Arthur says, feeling his face heat up. "He told me to watch some to figure out if I could be… you know."

"But you didn't?"

"No, I actually did. I just refused to tell him that."

"Oh. And, er, did it… do anything for you?"

"Not really," Arthur says bluntly.

Merlin nods again, hands twisting in his lap.

"Right. Well, sorry to pry, I didn't mean to-"

"You're not prying," Arthur says, feeling his heart beating faster and faster. "I'm telling you. I didn't know what I felt. There were too many things happening and I couldn't sort my feelings out. And then you went missing. And I've never been so scared in my life, except for the moment when your mum called me and told me you were in hospital."

Arthur shifts his body so he's facing Merlin.

"I thought you were going to die. I thought I'd lost you forever, and there's a part of me that's still fucking furious about that by the way, but most of all I was bereft. The idea of carrying on without you was like carrying on without half of me. And I realised that… that I'm not complete without you."

Merlin finally looks up at that and Arthur can see his eyes are shining with tears.

"And I know you're recovering, and I know it's not the right time to make any big decisions, for either of us. But after all this time spent being confused and scared, and feeling like it was too complicated for me to ever get a grip on, I think I get it now. I think it might be simple after all."

Arthur looks Merlin right in the eye.

"I think I love you."

Tears are running down Merlin's face now and he shakes his head, once, twice.

"Don't say that. Don't say that if you don't…"

"But I do, I do," Arthur says, tears pricking at his own eyes. "I love you Merlin."

Merlin lets out a kind of half-sob and launches himself at Arthur, and Arthur wraps his arms around him, holding him close. They stay locked together like that for several long minutes, gripping each other tight.

Then Merlin leans back, still sniffling slightly.

"Are you sure it's not just pity? Because I'm sick and you feel guilty?"

Arthur shakes his head.

"You're everything," he says, and doesn't care how corny it sounds, because Merlin is.

Merlin looks transcendent.

"Do you love me too?" he asks, wanting to hear it from Merlin's lips for the first time.

Merlin smiles and wipes at his face.

"Nah," he says.

There's only one answer to that.

Arthur leans in and presses his lips to Merlin's.

It's nothing like kissing Gwen, or Mithian, or any other girl before.

It's not fireworks, or flashing lights, or orchestras striking up. Nothing so dramatic as that.

It's simply like coming home.

**This. Now. The drip**

**of plain words.**

Arthur wakes early, as the first cracks of light filter through the gaps in the curtain. His body is wrapped around Merlin's, one arm underneath the other boy, one arm slung over the top, holding him in a loose embrace.

His face is buried in the back of Merlin's head, inhaling the sweet scent of his dark hair. He drops a kiss on the top of his head and Merlin stirs slightly but does not wake.

The future is uncertain, he knows that much. Merlin is not fully well, not yet, and there's every chance he might backslide.

Arthur can't control that, something he has finally accepted.

But he can be here. Can try and fight Merlin's demons alongside him, help him up when he falls down.

It won't be easy, maybe not ever, but everyone always says that the good things never are. And Arthur knows without a doubt that Merlin is one of the good things. He can feel it in his soul.

Arthur knows there are hard times ahead. Times when Merlin will falter, maybe even become very ill again. Times when Arthur will feel helpless and impotent and frustrated.

There'll be other things too, the normal things that accompany relationships; bickering and screw ups and storm outs. Pain, on both sides. That's how it goes.

But Arthur chooses to believe there are good times ahead too. Walks in the park and holidays in the sun and nights spent cuddled on the sofa watching television. Kissing and sex and someone to hold in bed at night.

The future is uncertain, but Arthur's going to do his best.

He hugs Merlin closer, waiting for his lover to wake.

**Yes.**

**Love.**

**This.**

~III~

That's it! A massive and incredibly sincere thanks to everyone who read this and reviewed it. It's been genuinely wonderful and amazing to read your thoughts. I started this story thinking it would be a couple of chapters, but your support helped it grow into this unwieldy beast and I'm eternally grateful.

And to anyone who can personally relate to the events of this story, stay strong and have hope. There is help out there and you can get better.


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